This second installment of Kherdian's fictionalized biography of his mother takes 16-year-old Veran, orphaned by the horrors described in The Road From Home, to Racine, Wisconsin--the home of a fellow Armenian who needs a wife as she needs entry to America. Veran, as she tells a friend, finds short, silent Mike Kherdian, about 20 years her senior, ""not what I would have chosen for myself, but he is a good man and has no faults."" This young girl who had once planned to go to college is apprehensive and a little dismayed by the prospect of marriage, and stifled before and after the wedding by Mike's all-controlling extended family who rush her to the altar with lies about the Red Cross deporting her if she isn't married. (The ceremony itself is not described, nor is any personal encounter between husband and wife. Kherdian's reserve is understandable, but as a result readers have no sense of the marriage.) But the spirited Veran we have met in the earlier volume proves her mettle here by dislodging Mike's no-good brothers from the couple's apartment, persuading Mike to move to another apartment away from the relatives' jurisdiction, and generally adapting better to American ways than her more traditional husband. Though none of this has the drama and pathos of her earlier adventures, the new situation has its own poignance and won't disappoint readers who have already met Veran.