When Sandy was an infant her mother, Lila, made a desperate decision to flee her abusive husband, take her baby, and run to New York City where a white woman with a black child was an unusual occurrence unless she was a prostitute. Fearing loss of custody, Lila made her way without the support of welfare agencies. Sandy was often left on her own to discover the world and to define herself. This is her story, a scruffy black kid on the streets, who had one goal, to get a family. "By the time I was eleven, our family-black, white, Jewish and Christian, all rolled into one-had moved into our home in the black neighborhood of St. Paul. It was concentric circles: black kid, white family, in a black community, in the predominantly white state of Minnesota. My mother was a Norwegian Christian, my stepfather a Russian Jew, and I was plaid."