A product of rape, Alphonsia was born in 1923 to a teenage mother, Emmy and raised by her over protective grandmother, Grace in the piney woods of Mississippi. Alphonsia's father was a good looking man of mixed-raced-a product of rape himself-who left the county as soon as he learned of Emmy's pregnancy. No longer the apple of her mother's eye, Emmy leaves her young daughter with her mother to try and make a better life for herself in Chicago. But after much heartache and tragedy, Emmy finds that the golden streets of the north that she'd heard so much about do not offer what she had dreamed. After Grace's death, Alphonsia has to leave the only home she's ever known to move to Chicago and in so doing, she also sets out to search for her purpose in life. She was born with a special gift and after coming full circle, Alphonsia finally realizes her calling.