The Bride Wore Red is a collection of short stories about an extended Indian family in the United States - cousins from New Delhi who marry European-Americans, and parents who come to live with them in suburban New Jersey and California. The stories are interconnected, providing the cumulative satisfactions of a novel.

The stories are about love and conflict in cross-cultural marriage. They also are about a universal immigrant experience: loyalty to heritage versus the desire to be part of one's new land.

The book begins with the first mixed marriage in the family - Deshi and Sally - in New Delhi. They establish their home in the United States. Deshi's cousins also come to America and throw off the custom of arranged marriage, Hermeet marrying Goodie, a Scandinavian-American, and Surinder marrying Grace. The Bride Wore Red follows these three marriages for three decades, from the late 1960s to the present, as the characters confront the often amusing, often poignant nuances of cross-cultural family life.