In Swamp Robin, the author retraces her steps through a traumatic young life, reliving the few happy times and remembering her struggles through the bad. The story exposes the sordid details of her mother's desire for revenge after being abandoned by the biological father of her illegitimate child. Her resentment, contempt, and guilt threaten to destroy the child. From Halifax to Harlem and places in between, Lizzie leads her vulnerable daughter through a peripatetic, almost-Dickensian, existence for the better part of eighteen years. In sharp contrast, the author lovingly recounts times spent with her grandparents who desperately tried to protect her from their own daughter's contemptible conduct.