Shortlisted for the Wilbur & Niso Smith Foundation Award.
Sisters Emma and Thalia Holden are raised in a home of limited means, reasonable happiness, but abundant love, and life in the Lower Ninth Ward is good to their youthful eyes despite vicious battles for and against segregation flaring in the streets of their city and across America.
In what seems a dream opportunity, nineteen-year-old Emma accepts a job for a prominent white family outside of Boston, where she could attend Lesley College, one of the few accepting black women in 1961. When tragedy strikes back home, Emma wonders if it is penance for leaving her family in search of a better life.