Set in rural Punjab of the first quarter of the 20th century, the novel unravels the cultural ethos through social, political and religious intricacies. The narrative begins in 1901. A newly-wed couple, Baij Singh and Daya Kaur, migrate from their village in the eastern Punjab to the western Punjab (now part of Pakistan after the partition of 1947) and try to make a new living. The story revolves around complex emotions of the protagonists, who faced with a difficult life of peasantry, painfully attempt to secure the future of their children