Tracey is an honor student, a teacher's pet, and the only black grandchild of the mulatto Kauffman Family. After generations of carefully-chosen mates, the Kauffmans have diluted just about every trace of Africa out of them. That is, unti Tracey's doting father went against his mother's wishes and married a smart, ambitious girl with beautiful ebony skin and features that call to a black man like West-African djembe drums.

Tracey takes after her mother, at least when it comes to skin tone and features. But being the dark-complexioned grandchild of the Kauffmans has left her feeling isolated and scarred. Every day she silently carries those scars through the halls of John L. LeFlore. But she's learning to compensate for her abundance of melanin with her abundance of body.

On top of her esteem issues, Tracey is dealing with the real possibility of her parents divorcing, and her doting father moving out. When she meets a fair-skinned friend of her fairer skinned cousins, he takes full advantage of her vulnerable naïveté and turns Tracey's life upside down. She's fourteen but now she has grown-woman problems, the kind she can't study her way out of.

Approx. 65 pages long

Sherman Terrell Cooley is a native of Mobile, Alabama and a proud graduate of John L. LeFlore High School (Rattler Nation).

He currently resides in Jacksonville, Florida with his lovely wife, Erica, where he works in sales and marketing, and is also a personal fitness trainer (ignitefitflame.com).