In 1955, fourteen-year-old Emmitt Till is murdered in Mississippi, an event that sends young Elizabeth Lacey deep into madness. Consumed by guilt as the unwitting architect of another cruel lynching, she takes her own life and leaves her four-year-old daughter, Kansas, in the care of her extended family. Seven years later in south Georgia, Kansas Lacey feeds her precocious curiosity with National Geographic magazines and endless questions. As Kansas searches to discover the circumstances of her mother's suicide, the Lacey family's dark history of repression, addiction, and violence begins to emerge. Against the backdrop of the dawning civil rights movement, Suzanne Hudson weaves a powerful coming-of-age story around the life of a girl who believes that by piecing together her history, she will learn who she wants to become.