First book in the Hudson series.
Rain grew up in the ghettos of Washington D.C., surrounded by gangs and violence, and living with the neglect of an alcoholic and abusive father. She has never felt she truly fit in, and struggles to pull her younger sister from the dangers of their world.
When her sister is murdered by a local gang, their mother reveals the secret of Rain's past: she was a product of an affair between a rich white woman and her African-American lover. To protect her remaining daughter, Rain's adoptive mother sends her to live with her real family, whom she has never met. But Rain finds that just as she did not belong to the world she had never known, she does not belong to this world of wealth and privilege either. Her new family refuses to acknowledge her publicly, preferring to pass her off as a charity case. She finds an escape in the theatre, but is that escape enough to help her find where she belongs?
