A journey of identity, family, and belonging in the changing American South.
Whitney Gaines has always known she was adopted. It's never been a problem--she loves her parents, Mary Ellen and Cal, a liberal minister, and enjoys her life in Birmingham, Alabama. But the year Whitney turns eighteen, Cal decides to run for Congress and the entire Gaines family is thrust into the spotlight. Whitney resolves to look for her birth parents, a decision her liberal-minded adoptive parents support. Although her birth mother doesn't answer her letters, Whitney finds her father, Sam Kirby, a gay cartoonist living in New York, wondering about the child he knows is out there, somewhere. Whitney's letters reawaken Sam's ambivalence about his southern roots.
At the same time, a romance blossoms between Whitney and her father's campaign manager, and Whitney begins writing to Sam's mother, who rejoices in the news that she is, against all odds, a grandmother. The relationships Whitney develops with her newfound natural relatives, particularly with her grandmother, are the centerpiece of this critically acclaimed novel.