Ralph travels from China to America on an engineering scholarship, determined to earn his doctorate and return successful.

Ralph visits the Foreign Student Affairs office, meets a secretary named Cammy, and accepts the American name Ralph.

Communist forces take full control of China and Ralph receives the last letter he will ever get from his parents.

Ralph's visa expires and he moves apartments repeatedly to stay hidden from the immigration police.

Starving and penniless, Ralph collapses on a park bench and is found by his sister Theresa.

Ralph meets Helen for the first time, proposes with a family ring, and they marry in a simple ceremony.

Theresa secretly lies to Ralph that her scholarship was canceled to ease his jealousy and get him studying again.

Helen gives birth to the family's first daughter, Callie, two weeks early during a blizzard.

Ralph completes his doctorate and Henry Chao helps him secure a tenure-track professorship at his college.

The family buys a house together in the Connecticut suburbs, stretching far beyond their financial means.

Ralph's college awards him tenure; Helen buys champagne and invites Henry and Janis to celebrate.

Grover Ding arranges for Ralph to buy a fried chicken shop; Ralph takes a leave of absence from teaching.

The chicken shop building collapses and must close; Ralph discovers that Grover sold him a structurally unsound building.

Ralph and Helen fight violently over their finances, and Helen falls backward through a bedroom window.

Theresa wakes from her coma and calls out for her family; Ralph rushes immediately to the hospital.

Ralph Chang arrives in America from China on an engineering scholarship, full of ambition and strict personal rules, only to find himself adrift after falling in love and losing contact with his family back home. After years of poverty and near-deportation, he is rescued by his sister Theresa, meets a woman named Helen, and slowly builds a family life in America. The three immigrants work toward their degrees, start a family, and eventually buy a suburban house in Connecticut — stretching themselves far beyond their means. Ralph earns tenure as a professor but abandons academia to buy a fried chicken shop arranged by the charming con man Grover Ding, a decision that leads the family toward financial ruin. The shop collapses and Grover's scam is exposed, setting off a chain of violence that nearly destroys the family entirely. The novel closes with a fragile moment of hope when Theresa wakes from a coma, offering Ralph a chance at redemption.

The headline story of Ralph Chang's journey from immigrant scholar to struggling family man.

Ralph's mother throws a going-away party and his father hands Ralph a wristwatch on the departure docks.

Ralph stalks Professor Pinkus through city streets and bumps into him in a bar; Pinkus threatens to have Ralph arrested.

Ralph finds a meat cleaver, cuts his own palm, and contemplates killing himself outside Pinkus's house.

After reuniting with Theresa at the park, Ralph moves into the apartment she shares with her friend Helen.

Little Lou, who helped put Theresa and Ralph back in contact, kills himself.

Ralph and Helen fight so savagely that she locks herself away; a passionate reconciliation draws them closer together.

Janis and Helen organize a dinner party specifically to introduce Theresa to the wealthy Grover Ding.

Henry and Janis visit the Connecticut house to celebrate Ralph's tenure; Theresa has a prior engagement and avoids them.

At a family dinner, Theresa confesses that her scholarship was never canceled — she invented the lie to motivate Ralph.

Ralph fails his driving test multiple times and fires his instructor before finally passing on a later attempt.

The family takes a celebratory drive through Connecticut and unanimously feels it is their destiny to live there.

Grover stays overnight at the family home and kisses Theresa at the breakfast table the following morning.

Cracks appear repeatedly in the chicken shop walls and the busboy quits, fearing the building will collapse.

Helen visits Theresa's apartment and discovers she has two cats named after her nieces, Callie and Mona.

The family sells the Connecticut house and moves into a smaller apartment as hospital bills and debts pile up.

Behind the Chang family's headline story lies a web of quieter moments that determined their fate. Ralph's tearful farewell on the docks and his humiliating confrontations with Professor Pinkus establish just how alone and desperate his early years in America truly were. After Theresa rescues him, the three immigrants slowly assimilate — mocking cultural differences, forming friendships, and dreaming of a better future — while a disastrous dinner party first exposes them to the dangerous charm of Grover Ding. Ralph's hard-won tenure brings a celebration his sister cannot share, and her long-held secret about the scholarship is finally confessed at the dinner table. As the chicken shop venture crumbles, cracks appear everywhere — in the shop walls, in Theresa's painful exile from the family home, and in the family's finances — until the weight of every wrong choice forces a reckoning.

The pivotal side moments that shaped the Chang family's transformation and fractures.

On the ship to America, Ralph sets strict personal goals and vows to have nothing to do with women.

Ralph works long exhausting hours killing chickens in a restaurant basement, cut off from all friends and family.

Theresa's arranged marriage falls apart in China and her family sends her to America with her friend Helen.

The three immigrants mock their lazy superintendent as a typical American, turning the joke on the whole culture.

Helen single-handedly fixes the building's broken boiler by reading the instruction manual, earning Theresa's deep admiration.

Grover and Ralph drive away in Henry's new car and bond over a long late-night meal at a roadside diner.

Henry Chao arrives at the hospital as Theresa's patient and their accidental meetings begin quietly to multiply.

Theresa and Henry begin a physical affair after she finally allows him to kiss her.

Ralph contacts Grover Ding again after finding his first semester as a tenured professor utterly miserable.

Ralph sends Grover a $1,000 check as a deposit to prove he is serious about the chicken shop deal.

Ralph drunkenly mocks Theresa at the dinner table about her affairs; she packs her bags and moves out.

Ralph trains Grover the dog to react aggressively to the scent of Theresa's cats, channeling his bitterness.

While walking the dog, Ralph spots Grover on the land behind the house; Grover taunts him about Helen's infidelity.

Ralph forces Helen into the car and threatens to drive into a tree unless she confesses about her affair with Grover.

Theresa is struck by Ralph's car while fleeing the charging dog in the driveway and falls into a coma.

The story of the Chang family turns on a series of pivotal decisions and quietly devastating revelations. Ralph's rigid self-discipline crumbles almost immediately upon arrival in America, while Theresa's backstory of rejection and displacement in China mirrors his own sense of not belonging. Small acts of resourcefulness and shared laughter gradually bind the three immigrants together, even as jealousy and ambition plant the seeds of future destruction. Love, secrecy, and temptation slowly drive wedges between them — Theresa surrenders to a doomed affair with Henry Chao, while Ralph abandons his hard-earned career for the illusion of easy wealth. Ralph's festering bitterness explodes in a series of violent acts — training his dog as a weapon, kidnapping his wife, and finally striking his sister with his car — forcing the family to confront the full cost of pride left unchecked.

The key decisions, discoveries, and emotional shifts that define the Chang family's story.