Eleven-year-old Delphine isn't happy when her father suggests she and her two younger sisters fly from their home in Brooklyn across the country to spend the summer with the mother who abandoned them. It's the summer of 1968 and Oakland, California, is the heart of the Black Panther movement. Their mother, Cecile, a poet and activist, has no interest in spending time with her girls, let alone nurturing them.

Instead, she sends them out into the city to get the free breakfast at a community center run by the Black Panthers and orders them to stay out of her hair until evening. With Delphine looking out for her sisters as always, the girls' eyes are opened as they explore questions of revolution, independence, identity, and family.

Emotional and vibrant, this realistic fiction—with its waves of political drama—explores the power of healing broken ties.