Izzy begins her story seated at the piano. At 11 years of age, after more than eight years of piano lessons, Isabella “Izzy” Badia Thornton is fascinated by the music she produces at the keyboard: “I can create any musical combination of sounds at my piano” (1). She dreams of being a concert pianist. She responds to the magical sounds of chords and the intricate cooperation of left and right hands, black and white keys, that produces a single grand sound. If only her life, she wishes, was as harmonic.

Izzy is biracial; her father is Black, and her mother is white. She recalls the tensions in her house growing up: fights between her parents that seemed to her to be about nothing. When she was eight, her parents divorced. The two parents both loved Izzy, but their personalities were so opposite the divorce was a relief. Isaiah, Izzy’s father, is a straight-laced corporate lawyer with a specialty in investment banking. He preaches tirelessly to Izzy about how white people look at Black people differently. Her mother, Nicole, is more free-spirited. She works as a server at Waffle House. After the divorce, her father lived for a time in California before he returned to Cincinnati.