Marigild is troubled by the mystery of her birth. Found as a newborn baby in a southern swamp, she is raised to do the housekeeping around the ramshackle cottage where she lives with a mean woman named Ruby and Ruby's bickering twin daughters. Marigold's only happy moments are the stolen ones she spends writing songs and poems and singing them from the heart, out in the swamp where nobody will hear her. One day, unbeknownst to Marigold, somebody does hear. When the invitation arrives calling all singing women to the Great Gospel Convention, Marigold is determined to get there, against Ruby's powerful will. Marigold knows she has a history to learn, a family to find, a song to sing. And it will take the power of a hurricane, the revelations of a fream, and the love of one special boy to carry Marigold to her destiny. National Book Award winner Joyce Carol Thomas's Iyrical tale is a gospel-Cinderella story that will touch anyone who ever needed to find a place in the world.