The narrator, Jasmine, has moved recently from Arkansas to a small Midwestern town. As she describes the street she lives on, Maple Street, and her new hometown, she recalls the time, years earlier, when she worked as an English teacher and lived with a host family in a small village outside of Madrid, Spain. She describes the particularities of each new space as she tries to understand her past experiences through the lens of the present. Jasmine relates the Spain sequence in chronological order, but offers images of her current life through vignettes, sometimes slipping off into describing the past or growing lost in her thoughts. The more she reflects, the more license she takes in filling in the gaps between what she witnessed and what she imagines to have occurred. The sections that do not take place in Spain function in dialogue with the linear story she relates. Ultimately, Jasmine leaves Spain and Maple Street behind, though she soon discovers she has not gone as far away as she had hoped.