Southgate, Martha

While spending the summer at the School of American Ballet in New York City, fourteen-year-old Vicki Harris must come to terms with the reality of her parents' divorce, her crush on Mikhail Baryshnikov, and the impact of being an African-American on her future as a dancer.

Latin instructor Jerome Washington, the only African-American teacher at an all-boys boarding school in Connecticut, finds his ideals about race challenged by a promising young African-American student who responds to Jerome in an unexpected way.

Josie Henderson, the only African-American senior-level female scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, has tried to shed her family roots back in Cleveland while building a successful life for herself, but when her brother, Tick, arrives on her doorstep fresh from rehab and on the brink of a relapse, Josie is forced to revisit her family's past and her own patterns of addiction.

While spending the summer at the School of American Ballet in New York City, fourteen-year-old Vicki Harris must come to terms with the reality of her parents' divorce, her crush on Mikhail Baryshnikov, and the impact of being an African American on her future as a dancer.