Like Sisters on the Homefront

When fourteen-year-old Gayle gets in trouble with a boy - again - her mother doesn’t give her a choice: Gayle is getting sent away from New York to her family down South, along with her baby, José.

In a small town in Georgia, there is nowhere to go but church, nothing to do but chores, and no friends except her goody-goody, big-boned, kneesock-wearing cousin, Cookie. Gayle is stuck cleaning up after Great, the old family matriarch who stays upstairs in her bed.

But the more she spends time with Cookie and Great, Gayle learns about her family’s history and secrets, stretching all the way back through the preachers and ancestors of the past. And slowly, the stories of her roots begin to change how Gayle sees her future.