White Roses interlaces the stories of two women - Erica, a New Yorker whose lover, Cal, an EMT, was killed in the World Trade Center attack and Rose, a Maasai raised in the shadow of Mt. Kilimanjaro. Craving a deeper knowledge of the man she mourns, Erica flies to Tanzania to meet his Peace Corps friends and experience the exotic countryside he loved. But as Erica begins retracing Cal's steps, she becomes aware that someone is tracking her as well. In alternating chapters, Rose, attempting to make sense of her own life, recounts the stories she told her children of their births, of her life on the savannah, of the early days in tanzanite mining and how she became a miner - and how she lost it all. Ultimately, the women's stories weave together to create a portrait of not just the one person Erica thinks she is memorializing, but a group of people, living and dead, who are neither heroic nor cowardly, but instead nuanced and human.