When Linda learns of a people in East Africa called the Masai, she feels "a tingle of kinship flowing through her veins." Fueled by the information she has learned at school, Linda embarks on an imaginative journey in which she compares her life in the big city to the life she might have if she were a Masai girl living in a tiny African village. Caught up in the many things that might be different, Linda finds comfort and beauty in one thing that would remain the same the "smooth brown skin over high cheekbones and black eyes that slant up a little when I smile."