While the premise of the story - a woman who is told to return a box of photographs to a relative that she didn't know until now - is promising; I feel that this book is trying to tie too many things together. Already we have racial issues, the NFL, riots in Detroit, government corruption, religious undertones, and the description promises even more historical renderings. While Erin Bartels says she had researched these topics extensively, I'm always uncomfortable by a white woman who is trying to tell the story of what it means to be black in America. It's not her place.