New Orleans, 1895. The air was thick with the scent of rain-soaked jasmine and secrets. At 13, Henrietta "Hattie" Robinson danced through her days like a ghost—barefoot, bare-skinned beneath her lace, and bare of a future. Her mother called her okru , a word she never explained, sharp as a broken bottle but soft in the mouth. Okru… okru… the syllables rolled in Hattie’s mind like river stones, the one true riddle of her existence.