In a predominately white California beach town, the only two black seventh-graders, Alberta and Edie, find hidden journals that uncover family secrets and speak to race relations in the past.

Beach-loving surfer Alberta has been the only black girl in town for years. When the bed and breakfast across the street finds new owners, Alberta is ecstatic to learn the family is black and they have a 12-year-old daughter, Edie. When the girls discover a box of old journals in Edie's attic, they team up to figure out exactly who's behind them and why they were left behind. Soon they discover shocking and painful secrets of the past and learn that nothing is quite what it seems.