Ailey Pearl Garfield grows up between the City in the north and summers spent in her mother's small hometown of Chicasetta, Georgia. From an early age, she finds herself in a battle for belonging that's made all the more difficult by a hurt in her past, as well as the whispers of women-her mother, Belle, her sister, Lydia, and a maternal line reaching back two centuries-that urge Ailey to succeed in their stead.
To come to terms with her identity, Ailey embarks on a journey through her family's past, uncovering the shocking tales of generations of ancestors-Indigenous, Black, and white-in the deep South. In doing so Ailey must learn to embrace her full heritage, a legacy of oppression and resistance, bondage and independence, cruelty and resilience that is the story-and the song-of America itself.
