Chava is a golem, able to hear the thoughts and longings of the people around her and compelled by her nature to help them. Ahmad is a jinni, a free-spirited creature of fire, imprisoned in the shape of a man. Pretending to be human, they are just two more immigrants in the bustling world of 1900s Manhattan. Park Avenue heiress Sophia Winston, whose brief encounter with Ahmad left her with a strange illness that makes her shiver with cold, travels to the Middle East to seek a cure, and meets a female jinni who has been banished from her tribe. In New York a little girl named Kreindel helps her rabbi father build a golem they name Yossele.