Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of addiction, substance use, racism, and mental illness. 

A one-page preface from an unidentified viewpoint starts the narrative. This voice insists the house on Maple Street belongs to them; it was “paid for with my family’s blood” (1). The voice is confident the new family will not stay long.

Marigold and her blended family (her mother, Raquel; younger brother, Sammy; stepfather, Alec; and younger stepsister, Piper) arrive at their new home in the Maplewood neighborhood of Cedarville, a midwestern city. They traveled together over several days from Marigold’s old home in a small, predominantly white California beach town. Raquel has earned a chance for the family to live for free in a renovated house by accepting an artist-in-residency position with the Sterling Foundation, a group devoted to reviving the neighborhood economically and culturally; Raquel will write a book over the three years they live in the house while also attending engagements and benefits for the foundation. Alec is an accountant who loves this idea; Mr. Sterling, head of the Foundation, has secured a job for him as well.