Modern-day Japan. Robin Swann's life in Tokyo is grinding to a halt. She's stuck in a dead-end job testing antiquities for an auction house, but her true love is poetry, not pottery. Her stalled dissertation sits on her laptop, unopened in months, and she has no one to confide in but her goldfish. On the other side of town, Nori Okuda sells rice bowls and tea cups to Tokyo restaurants, as her family has done for generations. But with her grandmother in the hospital and the shop next door stealing their best customers, the family business is foundering. If her luck doesn't change - and soon - everything she's worked so hard to build will collapse around her ears. The two women have nothing in common, until they learn that both their futures depend on possessing a cultural treasure that went missing before they were born. The past sets the stage for the hunt, while the elusive tea bowl leads Nori and Robin to secrets that make them question everything they believe. As they close in on the prize, it becomes clear that they will have to choose between seizing their dreams or righting the terrible wrong that has been poisoning the legacy of the tea bowl for centuries.