When Linli Feng returns home to LA after three years' absence she is horrified by what she finds. Her mother, Fanny, is unrecognizable. In her endless quest to achieve the 'right' kind of beauty, Fanny has spent the intervening years having bargain procedures in the basements of LA's bootleg beauty parlours. Now Fanny's disfigured face is in dangerous revolt, infected and collapsing from black-market injectables.
But even as Linli tries to wean Fanny off her addiction and wades through the wreck of her finances, her mother has another secret in store. She has won a spot on America's Beauty Extreme, a reality television competition in which botched plastic surgery addicts compete for reconstructive surgery as riveted audiences tune in.
When Linli attempts to rescue her mother from the sinister subculture that has already claimed her mother's face, she must at last confront the corrosive reality of the American dream that lies at the very heart of their relationship.