This is the early 1960s and the battle over integration is brewing even in Lucy's own home. Her stepfather clings to segregationist ways, while her independent-minded mother believes in the cause of civil rights. Lucy understands that there are unspoken lines she is not to cross, but her curiosity leads her to trespass on the forbidden world next door. There, she learns the hard realities of love, race, and hatred.

The story, told convincingly and compellingly in the voice of its young narrator, examines the complex relationships between family members, men and women, blacks and whites. Crossing Blood is a novel of making promises and struggling to keep them, of unlikely bonds and forbidden ones, of love gone wrong and love everlasting.