Set around the time of Pakistan's separation from India, Difficult Daughters centers on Virmati, a young woman born into an austere and high-minded household in Amritsar. The reformist fervor her family lives by is shattered when she falls in love with a neighbor, the Professor -- a man who is already married. That the Professor eventually marries Virmati, installs her in his home (alongside his furious first wife) and helps her towards further studies in Lahore, is small consolation to her scandalized family. Or even to Virmati, who finds that the battle for her own independence has created irrevocable lines of partition and pain around her.