Her brother, Jude, is a gifted musician, but like Leah, he is cursed. When Leah witnesses the aftermath of her brother's lynching and then loses the only mother figure she has ever known, she feels her life is one deep chasm of uncertainty. But she is strong. She has to be.
In a 1950s small backwater town in Mississippi, African Americans still live under the weight of Jim Crow laws enacted to ensure segregation among blacks and whites. Racism is rampant. The term ‘nigger' is as common as boll weevils in the cotton fields, and nobody is disgusted by its use or blinks an eye. Discrimination is an every day thing. Leah is a strong female protagonist who proves larger than the narrow attitudes and injustice she is forced to confront.