In award-winning
author Edwidge Danticat's first novel for young readers, it is election time
in Haiti. Bombs are going off in the capital city of Port-au-Prince, and
Celiane Esperance and her mother are nearly killed, giving them a fresh
resolve to join Celiane's father in Brooklyn, New York. The harsh winter and
concrete landscape are a shock to Celiane, who witnesses her parents' struggle
to earn a living, her brother's uneasy adjustment to America, and her own
encounters with learning difficulties and school violence.
