Summary

In Chapter 1, narrated by 11-year-old Ella and set in Ricksville in 1982, Ella was visiting Mr. Macabe, an elderly, blind man who was one of the few people Ella truly loved. Macabe asked Ella if everything was okay at home and if Leroy was still away. Leroy was Ella’s stepfather, her mother’s husband, and the father of her mother's other children. Ella knew that Leroy hated her.

Ella and her family lived in the poor, all Black neighborhood of South Ricksville. The town was still divided after the 1964 Freedom Summer murders. The White businesses on Main Street in Ricksville had been burned down in retaliation for the murders of three election workers by members of the Ku Klux Klan. That act of hate had cemented the relations between Blacks and Whites in the town.

Chapter 2 is narrated by a third-person narrator...