Jaybird Alexander is just fourteen-years-old when she moves from Texas to Atlanta with her father and his new wife, Geneva. Geneva hadn't planned on becoming a stepmother overnight, but they settle into a new rhythm as a fraught blended family. 

Three decades later, a tragic event rocks the life of comfortable privilege that Jaybird has carved out for herself in Brooklyn. Forced to return to the city where she grew up, Jaybird finds her loyalty torn between two women, two mothers, and two lives. She loves both of these women fiercely, but their competing pull threatens to tear her apart.

From the award-winning author of An American Marriage and Silver Sparrow comes a story about one woman's struggle to build a home for herself as the foundations of her family, and her country, shift beneath her.