It’s 1946, and Langston’s mother has just died. Now he and his father are leaving the rest of his family and friends in Alabama to move to Chicago. Langston misses everything—Grandma’s Sunday suppers, the red dirt roads, and the magnolia trees his mother loved.

In the city, they live in a small apartment surrounded by noise and chaos. It doesn’t feel like a new start or a better life. At home he’s lonely, his father always busy at work; at school he’s bullied for being a country boy.

But Langston’s new home has one fantastic thing. Unlike the whites-only library in Alabama, the Chicago Public Library welcomes everyone. There, hiding out after school, Langston discovers another Langston—a poet who he learns inspired his mother enough to name her only son after him.