Summary

Chapter 1 opens shortly after Fabiola Toussaint’s arrival in America with her mother Valerie. Fabiola narrates the novel from a first-person present tense perspective. Fabiola has just arrived in an airport in Detroit after her mother was detained at their first stop, which was the Kennedy Airport in New York City. Fabiola and her mother had come to America from their home in Haiti, and Fabiola was not detained because she is a United States citizen, having been born in the United States before being taken back to Haiti to be raised by her mother.

In Chapter 2, Fabiola meets her cousins in the Detroit airport. There is Chantal Francois, who is in her late teens, and then there are the twins, Primadonna “Donna” Francois and Princess “Pri” Francois, who are 16 years old like Fabiola. Fabiola has communicated with them over the internet but has...