Birdie and Cole develop a secret language called Elemeno, forming an inseparable bond that only they can share.

Birdie's parents separate after racial and political tensions drive them apart, leaving the girls in Sandy's care.

Sandy enrolls Birdie and Cole in Nkrumah, a private all-black school, to preserve their sense of black identity.

At a family meeting at the Aku-Aku restaurant, Deck announces he is taking Cole and Carmen to Brazil.

Cole leaves for Brazil with Deck and Carmen, tucking the Golliwog doll under Birdie's pillow before departing.

Sandy dyes her hair and wakes Birdie before dawn, and the two flee Boston in Sandy's green Pinto.

Sandy decides she and Birdie need false identities, and they become Sheila and Jesse Goldman while on the run.

After four years on the road, Sandy and Birdie rent a cottage from the wealthy Marsh family in New Hampshire.

Sandy begins a serious romantic relationship with Jim Campbell, a man she meets at a local bar.

On Christmas morning, Jim reveals that Sandy has already told him the truth about their false identities.

At a party, Samantha Taper finds Birdie alone and tells her plainly, 'I'm black. Like you.'

Birdie quietly packs her belongings, takes her mother's emergency cash, and slips away to the bus station.

Birdie arrives in Boston and tracks down Aunt Dot at the address on the hidden postcard.

Ronnie Parkman tells Birdie that Deck returned from Brazil years ago and hands her his Bay Area address.

Birdie spots Cole studying in a Berkeley café and they embrace tightly after nearly seven years apart.

Caucasia follows Birdie Lee, a mixed-race girl in 1970s Boston whose light skin sets her apart from her darker sister Cole and their Black Power activist family. When their parents' political lives become dangerous, the family fractures along racial lines: Deck takes Cole to Brazil while Sandy flees underground with Birdie, forcing Birdie to abandon her black identity and pass as white under the name Jesse Goldman. For six years Birdie lives a false life in rural New Hampshire, growing increasingly alienated from her true self while her mother builds a new life and her connection to Cole fades. A chance encounter with a mixed-race classmate who sees through her disguise finally breaks Birdie's resolve, and she flees to Boston to find the family she lost. Her search leads her across the country to California, where she reunites with her sister and discovers a place where being mixed-race is ordinary rather than impossible.

The headline events driving Birdie's journey from Boston to Berkeley.

Aunt Dot, Birdie's black female role model, leaves for India early in the story, severing Birdie's main tie to her father's family.

Birdie and Cole study Jet and Ebony magazines to learn how to look and speak like their black classmates at Nkrumah.

A white couple calls the police on Deck at the park, refusing to believe the white-looking Birdie is his daughter.

Sandy steals candy bars from a grocery store and Cole refuses to eat hers, signaling the family fracturing along racial lines.

Deck's girlfriend Carmen lavishes attention on Cole during a snowstorm visit but shows clear irritation toward Birdie.

Sandy takes the girls to visit her estranged mother Penelope Lodge to ask for money, exposing their tense relationship.

After leaving Boston, Sandy and Birdie travel through Maine, drifting between cheap motels and their broken-down van.

Birdie realizes the box of Negrobilia her father left behind is the only remaining link to her black identity.

Birdie spends time riding horses and secretly watching the Marsh family's refined lifestyle from inside their home.

After local boys hurl anti-Semitic slurs at her on the street, Birdie quietly removes her Star of David necklace.

During a trip to New York City, Birdie watches Black and Puerto Rican teens break-dancing and suddenly wants to run away.

At the grocery store, Sandy spots Samantha Taper with her white mother, drops a jar, and calls Birdie by her real name.

After her confrontation with Sandy at Dot's house, Birdie realizes she does not truly know her own mother.

Birdie visits her wealthy grandmother Penelope and tricks her into handing over money for a plane ticket to California.

Deck drives Birdie to Cole's Berkeley address and Cole's roommates point her across the street to a nearby café.

While the main plot traces Birdie's flight and reunion, the story's texture comes from the people and incidents that quietly erode her sense of self. In Boston, the loss of Aunt Dot, the struggles at Nkrumah, and Deck's clear favoritism of Cole all signal the family's slow unraveling before it formally breaks apart. On the road and in New Hampshire, Birdie must navigate an entirely new social world, adopting the style and habits of white classmates while her Negrobilia box becomes a fading relic of who she once was. Her observations of Samantha Taper and the New York City trip force her to confront what she has sacrificed by passing, while her mother's growing attachment to Jim Campbell makes Birdie fear her white identity is becoming permanent. After Birdie flees, her grandmother Penelope unwittingly funds the final leg of the journey, and Deck himself drives Birdie to the street where Cole lives, completing a reunion made possible by the entire network of people Birdie navigated across six years.

The relationships and smaller moments that shaped Birdie's fractured double life.

Birdie realizes her pale skin and straight hair cause strangers to assume she and Cole are not sisters.

Birdie recognizes that her white appearance places her on her mother's side, just as Cole's dark skin aligns her with Deck.

Birdie observes that Deck views Cole as proof he survived the integrationist shuffle, while Birdie's light skin makes him visibly uneasy.

Birdie watches her slimmed-down mother charm white strangers with ease and begins to fear Sandy has truly become Sheila Goldman.

At the beach, Birdie tells a group of children she is from India, owns a palace, and was stolen from her real family.

Birdie and Nicholas share a kiss, but she feels strangely unmoved compared to the excitement she felt with a girl named Alexis.

Birdie discovers a postcard from Aunt Dot hidden among her mother's things, revealing that Sandy has been keeping secrets from her.

Samantha Taper returns to school after the summer transformed and glowing, embodying the black swan Birdie had always dreamed of becoming.

After a confrontation with Black teens in New York, Sandy shocks Jim by calling him a honky and taking the teens' side.

Sandy tells Birdie that having Cole sparked her activism, making Birdie realize her mother has always thought of her as white.

Dot tells Birdie that Sandy was never truly in danger from the FBI and is running from something inside herself.

Sandy and Jim arrive at Dot's house and Sandy physically wrestles Birdie to the ground while a neighbor watches.

Walking Boston's streets after fleeing New Hampshire, Birdie wonders whether she truly became Jesse Goldman and Birdie Lee is now the lie.

Finding no one home at Deck's Oakland address, Birdie climbs through his open window and waits among his stacks of books.

When Cole and Birdie reunite, Cole speaks broken Elemeno to her and the long-forgotten language slowly comes back to Birdie.

Caucasia is built on a series of quiet but devastating realizations that accumulate until Birdie can no longer hold her false identity together. From early childhood, Birdie senses that her white appearance separates her from her father and sister, and she watches her mother's racial attitudes subtly shift even before the family splits. Once underground, each new relationship and incident peels away another layer of her constructed self, from her uneasy flirtation with Nicholas to the discovery that Sandy has been hiding a postcard from Dot. The betrayals multiply when Sandy reveals their secret to Jim and then uses Cole's birth as evidence of her activist credentials, forcing Birdie to understand that her mother has never fully seen her as black. It is only after Dot dismantles the myth of Sandy's danger, Sandy physically attacks Birdie to drag her home, and Birdie confronts the unsettling possibility that Jesse Goldman has become her true self, that she can finally make the journey to reclaim the sister and identity she lost.

The discoveries and emotional shifts that forced Birdie to reckon with who she really is.