Covey Lyncook is a young, biracial woman from Jamaica who loves to swim and is content with her life with the boy she loves Gibbs, and her best friend, Bunny.

But her father, Lin, is a chronic gambler and alcoholic who becomes indebted to a loan shark, prompting him to sell his daughter into marriage.

When Covey's new husband dies, she flees Jamaica, reinventing herself time and again as her story leads into how she became Eleanor, a woman who dies and leaves a flash drive of her family history and secrets to her adult, estranged kids.