Situated in Ohio before the Civil War, Tawawa House is a resort where white men vacation each summer with their black, enslaved mistresses. Lizzie, Reenie, and Sweet, regulars at Tawawa House, become friends over the years. Their lives are upturned when Mawu comes to the resort and starts talk of running away.

"Two families from different social classes are joined together by an unexpected pregnancy and the child that it produces. As the book opens in 2001, it is the evening of sixteen-year-old Melody's coming of age ceremony in her grandparents' Brooklyn brownstone. Watched lovingly by her relatives and friends, making her entrance to the music of Prince, she wears a special custom-made dress. But the event is not without poignancy. Sixteen years earlier,...