Race, sexuality, honesty, abuse, love and forgiveness are interwoven as the characters reveal themselves. Three families, one Italian, one Irish, one black confront the legacy of the past within the context of life in 1999 Cambridge, MA.
Kalayla: a feisty bi-racial 11 year old whose world implodes when she discovers her mother and father belong in the Guinness Book of World Records as "The World's Biggest Liars" about her mother's family.
Maureen: Kalayla's mother cocoons herself in art projects, deflecting the pain of her parent's rejection. Her husband's sudden death catapults her into life as a single mother raising a rebellious, incomprehensible daughter.
Lena: their landlady wears only black and although financially successful lives in a fourth-floor walk-up apartment. Lena is tormented by memories of the dead - her twin sons and husband, and the living - two sons from whom she is estranged.
Anyone who has experienced the angularities, rigid pockets and soft spots of family life can take hope from reading Kalayla. It shows us that pathways for change do exist, and if we choose to, we can find them.