James McBride grew up in the all-black projects of Red Hook, Brooklyn with eleven siblings, and a mother who was as tough as nails. His mother was born a white, Orthodox Jew, who at the age of seventeen, left her family and past behind to marry a black minister. McBride reveals within this memoir the trials and hardships that his mother endured from a young age, and his own experiences of growing up in poverty with such a unique family.