For many years Andovia was a military school for boys from wealthy families, but somewhere along the way, it was abandoned and eventually turned into an orphanage. It was the place where ten-and-a-half-year-old Amelia, nicknamed Meely, had lived for the better part of her childhood and where, she believed, nothing would ever change. Then on a Monday morning, in the spring of 1950, at breakfast, in between bites of yucky mush, Sybil whispered that a new girl was coming soon, an odd-looking mulatto, and no one really wanted her, but they were forced to take her.

Amelia didn't know what a mulatto was or if Sybil was right, but she was such a know-it-all, always acting like she knew things that no one else knew, she didn't ask. It didn't matter anyway since there were no empty beds in her ward. And then the very next day, Fanny, who had been in the bed next to her, was adopted.

Susie Maitland, the mulatto, was put in that bed, and everything changed.