A pregnant teenager finds support and forgiveness from God through a book of poetry presented from the Virgin Mary's perspective.

Dyamonde Daniel is excited about the local library's poetry contest, and so is her friend Free. The prize is one hundred dollars, and just think what they could buy with that much money! But when they find out that Damaris, one of their classmates, has been living in a homeless shelter, their ideas about what it means to be rich or poor start to change.

Alternating poems compare and contrast the conflicted feelings of Ishmael, son of the Biblical patriarch Abraham, and Sam, a teenager in New York City, as they try to come to terms with being abandoned by their fathers and with the love they feel for their younger stepbrothers.

Inconsolable at being separated from her older brother, eight-year-old Paris is apprehensive about her new foster family but just as she learns to trust them, she faces a life-changing decision.

Jazmin, an Afro-American teenager who lives with her older sister in a small Harlem apartment in the 1960s, finds strength in writing poetry and keeping a record of the events in her sometimes difficult life.

Dyamonde is angry at her mother for not buying her the shoes she wants, but when she finds out that a classmate is in a worse situation, she is determined to help.