Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses racism, suicide, and substance abuse. It includes racist terms for Black and biracial people in direct quotes from the source material.

Jane Gibson, a 40-something Gen X writer and professor, is a biracial woman who lives in Los Angeles with her husband, Lenny, and their two children, Ruby (age eight) and Finn (age six). Lenny is a Black painter whose abstract works don’t sell because he refuses to depict Black people.

Jane is pushing her son, Finn, on the swings at the park on a hot February day. While she pushes him, Jane thinks about how the pediatrician had advised they get specialized treatment for Finn’s behavior. Things have been difficult in the past year for Jane and Lenny, financially and emotionally. On the car ride home from the park, Finn tells Jane about life on “the Finn planet” he believes he comes from (8).

Jane and the family are house-sitting for Jane’s friend, Brett, for the year while he is in Australia working on a television show. They have been bouncing from house to house in the LA area for the past decade.

Jane had written a well-received first novel. She needs to publish her second novel, a sprawling historical exploration of “mulatto people,” to get tenure at her job.