Set in Houston in the early 1990s, Against gravity is a harrowing and absorbing story of three lives colliding--Madison Kirby, an angry, dying intellectual; Ric Cardinal, a social worker dedicated to helping others but tormented by the son he cannot save; and Roya, a struggling Iranian immigrant who has traveled for years through the war-torn Middle East to arrive in Texas to eke out the most tenuous life for herself and her daughter. They each tell of their own lives, yet as their stories intertwine a portrait of shared struggle and loss emerges.