In this quietly beautiful coming-of-age story, eleven-year-old Valena lives with her family in rural Ohio where she and her cousin share experiences such as surviving a tornado and going to an amazing circus. Yet Valena lives in both the present and the past as she struggles with racism in her daily life and listens to and learns from her mother's tales of her family's proud history. Moving backward and forward in time, these pieces of Valena's life blend to form an extraordinary portrait of t