11 year old Keda, a black girl adopted by a loving white family, is our likeable and articulate narrator whose thoughts and questions about her identity and feelings will resonate with many readers of similar age. She and her older sister are uprooted by their professional cellist father and former violin prodigy mother from their school and home in Baltimore to new surroundings, way down south in Albuquerque. Keda encounters a racial slur from a pupil at her new school and the book deftly explores the complex ways in which her parents' colour blindness to the issue is damaging to who she is. Keda's mother's descent into mental ill heath and attempted suicide (not graphically depicted), gives rise to a nuanced look at the impact on the family. The story combines narration, letters (to Lena her best friend, also black and adopted into a white family) and poems. This is a satisfying and moving novel which will leave readers happy that Keda emerges with a stronger and kinder sense of herself.