John Shed leads a solitary exitence in a small community in San Francisco where he works in the salt ponds. African-American Shed barely ventures out with his white live-in lover, Belinda, who longs to interact more socially with the world around her. When a young Vietnamese girl named Minh shows up on their doorstep and claims to be Shed's daughter, Shed must take a hard look at himself and his ability to be a nurturing father and responsible husband. He doesn't like what he sees and reverts to heavy drinking -- prompting Belinda to move out of the house. Now father and daughter are left alone to sort out their feelings about their own identities in order to come to terms with each other's ethnicities.