“At the start of the novel, the audience meets Jane, a twenty-four year old woman, pregnant and living on an Iowa farm with an adopted son, Du. Mukherjee shows Jasmine’s character loving farm life, The farmers around here are like the farmers I grew up with (11). Jane draws parallels between her life in Punjab to life in Iowa. To Jane, Iowa is a place of farmland, which she can relate back to her life in Punjab. Iowa to her is a closed off white society, unlike New York which is full of different ethnicity. The book, so far, is straightforward. Mukherjee introduces the protagonist to us as Jane in a very organized text, but she changes gears without any hint to the reader, and the next chapter just jumps straight back to the protagonist’s childhood.”