Stars Came Tumbling — Robert Brown

In one month of one summer...learning the stories that have determined your secret life, your greatest hopes, your worst fears. An ancient map of the stars holds the key, carried by a drifter who asks a widow and her adopted son for asylum. From the streets of Shanghai to the plains of Texas, a cast of characters fighting over land and identity must sift through the cracks between myth and truth, revealing relationships and plots hidden for most of a century.