Seventeen years ago, Sepha Stephanos fled the Ethiopian Revolution after witnessing soldiers brutally beat his father. Selling off his parents' jewelry, he paid for passage to the United States. Now, he finds himself running a grocery store in a poor African-American neighborhood in Washington, D.C. His only companions are two fellow African immigrants who share his feelings of frustration and bitter nostalgia for their home continent.

He realizes that his life has turned out completely different and far more isolated from the one he had imagined for himself years ago. Soon, Sepha's neighborhood begins to change. Hope comes in the form of new neighbors—Judith and Naomi, a white woman and her biracial daughter—who become his friends and remind him of what having a family is like for the first time in years.

But when the neighborhood's newfound calm is disturbed by a series of racial incidents, Sepha may lose everything all over again. Told in a haunting and powerful first-person narration, the novel casts the streets of Washington, D.C., and Addis Ababa through Sepha's eyes. The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears is a deeply affecting and unforgettable debut novel about what it means to lose a family and a country—and what it takes to create a new home.