In the summer of 1993, Yuri, a teenage orphan, is living with her strict, religious aunt Ruth in a Havana suburb when Mariela, a thirty-four-year-old artist, arrives from the United States with a shocking revelation. She claims to be Yuri's sister, insisting that she and Yuri share a mother, and that Ruth essentially kidnapped her when she sent her into exile against her will through Operation Pedro Pan. Forced to grow up in orphanages, Mariela has spent the past three decades in the United States and has returned to Cuba to reclaim her roots, make art, and perhaps seek vengeance on Ruth. Yuri is both fascinated and repulsed by the young, glamorous, and aggrieved Mariela. When Ruth is jailed for unknown charges, Yuri falls further into Mariela's mercurial orbit.

Spanning two countries and three decades, The Tilting House explores identity and family loyalty, the effects of losing one's mother and motherland, the scars of political and historical upheaval, and an immigrant's complex quest both to return "home" and to be free from the past. Through her long journey, Yuri comes to understand that the past cannot be fully recovered, or fully escaped, even as she approaches the possibility of compassion for Mariela, for Ruth, for others, and for herself.