In 1938, eleven-year-old Esther joins her father in tropical, multicultural Cuba, where they toil together to rescue the rest of their Jewish family from persecution in Poland. Includes notes about the author's grandmother, on whom the story is based.

When Lora joins Castro's literacy campaign, she travels into the impoverished countryside to teach her fellow Cuban's to read and write, while sharing the dangers posed by counterrevolutionaries in the hills.