Grace lives with her mother, grandmother, and her cat. Her dad lives in "The Gambia." She loves to read, but it makes her uncomfortable that all the stories she reads are about families different from hers – families with a mother, a father, a girl, and a boy. One day, Grace gets a surprise letter from her father, and in it she finds two tickets to visit him in "The Gambia." She and her grandmother spend some time there, and Grace becomes close with her father, her step-siblings, and her step-mother. When they’re about to fly home, Grace’s grandmother encourages her to write stories about families like her own, and reminds her that families are what you make them.