The novel opens in 2016 in Montgomery.
The narrator talks about her daughter, Anna, the girl who she has raised as her own, but Anna is not her birth daughter. The narrator mentions that now Anna needs to learn about her origins and her blood family.
The action goes back in time. It is 1973 in Montgomery. We discover that the narrator, Civil Townsend, is a nurse who has found her first job at a family clinic for black women. Her first case is two very young girls, India and Erica, who need to have birth-control injections. Erica is 13 and India is only 11 and can't talk. From the first Civil feels she needs to do more for this family. Erica and India live in a minuscule shack with their father and grandmother, and the conditions are deplorable. Civil wants to get them an apartment, so she talks to the the people in that department, and against the rules she takes the girls shoppina and even they go home where they can have a bath.
We know some things about Civil's life. She recently had an abortion when she got pregnant. She was dating her best friend, Ty Ralsey, but she could not have the baby, and when she had the abortion, she broke up with Ty. Civil lives with her parents. Her father is a doctor, who is disappointed that Civil did not want to work with him in his clinic. And her mother is into art, and she is quite aloof in her relationship with Civil.
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