RUE'S FAMILY IS HER WHOLE LIFE: Her sister, Tasha, Moms, and the play aunties and cousins who live in East Row, the Houston neighborhood she calls home, are her world. But it is upended when the unthinkable happens: Moms is murdered and Rue is snatched away by a father who abandoned her at birth —a father who now insists she follow him to his home, Ghizon, a secret country of gods who wield a powerful magic. In Ghizon, Rue's existence is a crime. There's never been a half-god, half-human there, where leaders protect their magical powers at all costs and thrive on human suffering. Miserable and desperate to see her sister on the anniversary of their mother's death, Rue breaks Ghizon's most sacred law: she returns to Houston, only to discover Black kids are being forced into crime and violence, and Tasha is in danger of falling sway to the very forces that claimed their mother's life. Worse still, evidence mounts that the evil plaguing East Row is the same one that lurks in Ghizon, an evil that will stop at nothing until it has stolen everything from her. Rue must embrace her true identity and wield the full magnitude of her ancestors' power to save her hood before the gods burn it to the ground. But how can she pull it off when the enemy is everywhere?