Every time Jahama Swallowtail looks in the mirror, she sees the same chubby caterpillar. Butterfly Middle School begins tomorrow, and although all the other girls have gotten their wings, Jahama is dreading the fact that she will be starting this school year in exactly the same way she ended the last one.
Jahama knows very little about wings, except that she really wants her own, but she is about to get an extremely brutal lesson in how to tell the difference between glamorous wings and genuinely beautiful ones.
As the oldest child and only daughter of a single mother, Jahama is well acquainted with struggle. Or so she thinks. But she is about to be taught by a 'hideous' teacher what all-too-real struggling looks like. And through a life and death situation, she will begin to grasp the meaning of what it entails to overcome life's toughest challenges.
From jeopardizing a lifelong friendship to try to fit in, to realizing that her own wings might resemble the unattractive wings that her mother and the 'hideous' teacher both have, she will figure out that there are many 'cocoons' in life. She will also begin to understand that although she will need to ask for help from others and especially from God, she alone will be responsible for how she emerges from each one. Most of all, she will begin the process of discovering that if you are not complete without wings, you will never be complete with them.