“I can create any musical combination of sounds on my piano. That’s my superpower.”

This is Izzy at the beginning of the novel, confident, poised, and certain of herself. For her, playing the piano gives her command and control over a world that has otherwise begun to slip into chaos and uncertainty as her parents’ divorce takes hold. The superpower idea reflects Izzy’s immaturity and measures how far the girl has to go to engage the world as it is and discover her true superpower is not in retreating from that world but in engaging it head on.

“Daddy, are you and Mommy splitting up because you’re Black and she’s white?” 

The question is innocent and straightforward but reflects Izzy’s need to grow emotionally. As a biracial child, Izzy is just beginning to sort through the impact of her racial profile. Her assumption here is that race played some part in her parents’ divorce. It is a reaction that reflects her naivete and her innocence—her parents, like non-biracial couples, simply drifted apart. Izzy needs clear causality and tidy logic. Here, she wants explanation that is simple and clean.

“Birds make nests in trees, right? One nest. One tree. Who ever heard of a robin moving her eggs every week to a new tree? That’d be crazy.” 

Here Izzy struggles to understand her parents. In her innocence, Izzy uses the available metaphors of the natural world she loves in her efforts to understand the implications of her parents’ complicated custody arrangement. She does not see, of course, what the reader does: the