Growing up in crowded south London, Jacinta knows she is unusual: neither black nor white. But when her father dies, and her mother breaks down, Jacinta loses the protection of her family's love and must develop her own personal strengh. Even in marriage she must create her own path when Lady, her daughter, is born with a deformity, and her husband cannot accept the child. Now sitting at her mother's deathbed, Jacinta recounts the odyssey that has carried her from England to America, to Africa, and deep into her family's history.