The poignant coming of age story of a twelve-year-old, dark-skinned African-American girl named Rena, who grew up in a mulatto family in a small southern town during the 1940s and 50s. Rena has to cope with the blatant racism of the time and the tensions over skin color within her own family. She is the first dark-skinned child born to a family of first-generation offspring of people of mixed white and black ancestry. She is forced to confront her mother's death with a family that sees her as an intruder. Thus, she embarks on a journey of discovery, uncovering family secrets surrounding her birth, her mother's mental illness, and the motives behind the indifference her family feels toward her.