Max's mother Natasha was killed in the 9/11 attack, and Max is devastated because of his close relationship with her. His stepfather asks him to tidy up her personal belongings and her stack of old records and papers. During the process Max discovers a journal in which she describes her married life with her transgendered husband, and her struggle in bringing up Max who could do prodigious memory feats but suffered from serious learning disabilities.
The novel pursues two narrative tracks: in one, Max does a deconstruction of the effect of the 9/11 attack on New Yorkers, including himself, and, in the other, Natasha describes her turbulent life in New York during the last four decades of the twentieth century.
The concluding section deals with Max zeroing in onto the origins of the 9/11 attack and the hidden warning signs he finds in the digital texts he accidentally discovers at the website of an Arab professor at NYU who is a close friend of Natasha.