Annie’s mother, Hattie, left when Annie was just three days old. Everyone in town calls Hattie “trifling,” which Annie notes is a particularly vicious insult in Honeysuckle. As a result, Annie has largely been treated with either pity or disgust; whatever Annie does wrong is attributed to her mother’s disposition. Granny, who raised Annie, has always insisted that Hattie would be back some day. While Vernice has an entire album of pictures of her mother, Annie has only a wallet-sized photo of Hattie at 15 years old.

One day, when Annie is 16, Hattie returns to Honeysuckle. However, she does not visit her mother or Annie. Instead, she goes to the local bar, The Den, and asks the owner, Mr. Daniel, for money. He gives it to her but asks for her address in exchange. Mr. Daniel then gives it to Granny. When Annie laments the fact that she didn’t get to see her mother, Granny insists that she wouldn’t have left her address if she didn’t want to see anyone. However, she also advises Annie to stop “trying to be her daughter” (23).

A week later, Annie decides to visit Mr. Daniel to ask why her mother went to him. When he refuses to give a straight answer, Annie discusses it with Vernice. They decide that Mr. Daniel could be Annie’s father, even though he has a wife. Annie is excited at the prospect, largely because of Mr. Daniel’s wealth. However, when Annie questions him a few months later, he insists that his only connection to Hattie was allowing her to drink for free in his bar. Annie then asks him for a job, hoping to travel to Memphis, Tennessee, to see her mother. Mr. Daniel instead suggests college but agrees to let her work for him alongside his nephew, Clyde.

A couple of years later, just before graduating high school, Vernice and Annie discuss the future as Annie packs her suitcase. Vernice has three brand new suitcases that she will take to college, but Annie has only one old hand-me-down. Vernice is going to Spelman College, while Annie is going to Memphis with Clyde and his cousin Bobo. No one knows about their trip. They will take Clyde’s car and use the money Annie saved from work. Vernice tries to convince Annie to come to Spelman with her instead, but Annie insists that they were raised differently: Vernice is destined for education but Annie has to work hard just to survive.

That night, Vernice lies in bed thinking about her mother. Arletha was 22 when Vernice’s father killed her. Vernice wonders whether finishing high school would have made Arletha’s life turn out differently. In a dreamlike trance, Vernice feels her mother’s presence in the room and calls out for her. A moment later, she feels the presence leave.

The next morning, Vernice goes to pick up Annie for school. When she gets there, Granny is on the front porch, hysterical. The neighbors arrive, including midwife Ola Mae and schoolteacher Miss Jemison, who everyone assumes is Ola Mae’s girlfriend. Assuming that Annie has died, they go into the house. Vernice follows them, wanting to give Annie the respect of making her dead body look presentable. However, Annie is not there; instead, there is a note saying that she is leaving. Vernice informs them that she went to find her mother with Clyde, but regrets revealing the secret.

The night before, Annie takes her already-packed suitcase and sneaks out her bedroom window. She believes that Clyde is her boyfriend and that they are going to Memphis to be together and find her mother. However, when she gets to the car, stolen from Clyde’s mother’s boyfriend, Clyde is in the front seat with a girl he introduces as “Babydoll.” Dejected, Annie allows Bobo to help her with her suitcase and gets into the backseat.

Because of the rules of the Green Book, there is no restroom stop available to Annie and the others for a couple hours. Instead, Clyde pulls over on the highway. Babydoll invites Annie to join her in the brush for privacy. Babydoll and Clyde have been together for a long time, so Annie has no right to be angry or jealous. Plus, Annie only wanted to be with Clyde for a ride to Memphis, which Annie admits to herself is probably true. When Babydoll takes tissue paper out of her bra and offers some to Annie as a peace offering, Annie begrudgingly accepts it.

Before dawn on the first day, Clyde’s car breaks down. They manage to put water on the radiator, which he brought for this purpose, and are able to get just past Bogue Chitto, Mississippi. There, they find a home run by a woman named Lurelia, but she insists that they stay at least two weeks and rent two rooms, one for the young men and one for the young women, which they can’t afford. She suggests they continue down the road to her sister, Lulabelle.

On the way, the car breaks down again. They are forced to push it for a couple hours until they finally reach a sprawling former plantation. Babydoll notes that it still “looks like slavery times,” which Annie euphemizes as “sharecropping” (55). The quarters where enslaved people lived have been made into homes, with laundry hanging outside and the smells of cooking coming from within. North of these is a massive mansion. A Black woman comes outside, introduces herself as Lulabelle, wonders what they did to upset Lurelia, and then jokes about their religion. She tells them that they are at a brothel.

Vernice notes that Annie left her only a dress and a pair of earrings. She refuses to wear the dress because it should belong only to Annie.

A few days later, on Easter Sunday, Aunt Irene can see that Vernice is upset, but she refuses to talk about it. Instead, they spend the day in a silence that lasts through dinner. Finally, Aunt Irene confronts Vernice, who admits that she is upset about Annie leaving without saying goodbye. Irene expresses the importance of leaving Honeysuckle, as she did and as Annie is trying to do. Vernice’s mother did not, instead becoming a housewife too young. Aunt Irene adds that Vernice should be grateful for what she had with Annie.

Vernice writes a letter to Annie. She describes the people in Honeysuckle and asks if Annie has found her mother.

Annie and her friends discuss whether to stay. They offer to work for Lulabelle in exchange for a cabin and food, as well as money to pay a mechanic to fix their car. However, Lulabelle never pays anyone in money: She pays people in sex with her workers. Babydoll negotiates, insisting that Lulabelle pay them in lodging, while they can pay the mechanic with sex. In the end, Lulabelle allows the young women to clean laundry while the young men do handiwork around the cottages.

The first day, Annie and Babydoll wash all the bed sheets. When they finish, Lulabelle pulls the sheets off the line, throws them into the mud, and steps on them. She scolds them for not getting them clean enough: They have to be pristine so that men will come back.

One rainy night, in the cabin that they share, Annie and Babydoll discuss how they likely have enough sessions of sex work saved up for the mechanic to finish their car. However, Clyde interrupts them. He has had sex with two of the sex workers. Lulabelle found out, and has deducted this from their earnings. He thought the women liked him and didn’t realize he would have to pay.

Near the end of summer, Vernice prepares to leave for college. Aunt Irene retrieves her old suitcase, which the man from Dayton bought for her years ago when she moved to Honeysuckle. It is well-polished, as Irene has taken good care of it over the years. The Ohio Man died three years ago; his wife sent Vernice a program from the funeral out of respect.

Aunt Irene and Vernice choose their routes carefully based on the Green Book. Aunt Irene takes the train, as the train station has a dedicated waiting area for Black people. Vernice chooses a longer bus route that goes first to Kinder then Atlanta, as the bus driver on the more direct route is known for leaving Black children behind. Vernice notes that they both choose their routes based on the ability to travel with dignity.

On August 17, Vernice leaves for Atlanta. On the bus, she inadvertently sits too close to the front, in the “white” section. The bus driver confronts her, but when Vernice tries to move, there are no more seats left in the back. Flustered and overwhelmed, she responds angrily to the bus driver, who forces her off the bus. As he yells at her, a Black man named Larry pumping gas nearby stops him. He pretends to be related to Vernice, promising to punish her later. When Vernice protests, he slaps her. Satisfied, the bus driver drives off with Vernice’s luggage still on the bus.

Larry grabs Vernice and insists that she stay and marry him. When he reaches out and touches her lip, she closes her eyes and prays for help. Just then, Larry’s aunt, Carmen, scolds Larry. Carmen praises Vernice for sitting in the front of the bus, thinking that she did it on purpose, but also warns her about how dangerous this kind of rebellion is. When Vernice explains that she is from Honeysuckle, Carmen notes that Ola Mae delivered her baby years ago. She promises to take Vernice back there.

To Annie’s surprise, Lulabelle makes everyone attend an outdoor church service on Sundays. Lulabelle herself delivers the sermon. On the second Wednesday, Lulabelle asks Annie to help her with her next sermon. Realizing that Lulabelle can’t read well, Annie reads aloud the story of Hagar, Sarah, and Abraham from Genesis 16 in the Bible.

Annie and Lulabelle debate the biblical story. In it, when Sarah and Abraham are too old to conceive, Sarah’s servant Hagar has Abraham’s child; this causes a rift between her and Sarah. Lulabelle argues that this is no different than enslavers taking children from enslaved people, while Annie believes that Sarah and Abraham wanting a family adds nuance to the story. The conversation then turns to mothers. Lulabelle and Lurelia lost their mother when they were young. She notes that loss goes both ways: Children lose their mothers, while mothers lose the joy of raising children. When Annie explains that she is going to Memphis to find her mother, Lulabelle calls this useless, but admits that Annie needs to figure this out for herself.

Lulabelle asks Annie to braid her hair in cornrows. As Annie does so, Lulabelle tells her that one of the women she employs is pregnant. She has three choices: Turn the woman away once she gives birth, find a home for adoption, or call the white doctor who performs abortions nearby. She prefers the third option, as it is easier for her and the mother. When Annie finishes braiding, Lulabelle praises her work, then has her undo the cornrows: She only asked Annie to do it because it helped her think.

The conversation makes Annie think of Vernice and how much their friendship means to her. She gets two postcards and two stamps so that she can write to her.

Ola Mae and Miss Jemison give Vernice a ride to college. They use money from the church to help her buy new belongings. On the way, they show affection, confirming for Vernice that they are romantically involved; the thought makes Vernice happy.

On the drive, Ola Mae talks about how proud she is of Vernice for leaving Honeysuckle. For the first time, Vernice is glad to be doing so. However, conversation about her mother makes her sad and frustrated by everything that has happened. Ola Mae moves into the back seat and holds Vernice’s head in her lap, encouraging Vernice to cry and show her emotions openly.

At Spelman, Vernice meets her roommate, Joette Cunningham, who is a junior. Joette is wealthy and has her own maid, intimidating Vernice. However, that night, Joette apologizes for being rude when Vernice arrived. Joette’s money comes from her father’s mortuary business. When Vernice tells her that both her parents are dead, Joette guesses that her father was responsible, insisting that it’s more common than anyone would think.

Annie and her friends stay with Lulabelle for several more weeks. When Annie asks to see how much money they owe, she realizes that while her work with Babydoll pays for their lodging, there is no real system for Clyde and Bobo’s wages. Annie realizes that she doesn’t mind being there. However, Babydoll despises it. Annie guesses it is because Babydoll’s mother did sex work in the past.

About ten weeks into their stay, Annie and Babydoll receive a set of sheets that are severely blood-stained. They speculate that the doctor visited to perform an abortion. With Bobo’s help, they bury the sheets, praying that the mother survived.

Annie and Bobo begin sleeping next to each other in the cabin. The night after burying the sheets, Bobo tells her about seeing a ghost on the property. When he went to a cabin near the edge of the land that needed repairs, a woman came to the door and urged him to come inside to fix a hole in the wall. However, when he stepped inside, he saw the woman laying underneath a white man, staring at him. He apologized and turned to leave. He then turned back, but the woman and the man had vanished.

Bobo is visibly shaken. He tells Annie that he “failed as a soul” (117) by leaving the woman there. Annie comforts him. They fall in love with each other after that.

A couple weeks into the semester, Joette helps Vernice get her bags back. They are both mostly concerned with Vernice’s clothes, which largely came from church donations. They ask for help from Joette’s cousin, Marylinda, who pays for her own room at the edge of campus. Students refer to it as the “Underground Railroad” because they use it to escape off campus.

Joette argues that Vernice’s clothes are most likely at the bus stop right in Atlanta. However, because the driver ripped up her ticket, Vernice has no way of proving that they’re hers. Marylinda’s skin is light enough that she could pass as a white woman and just explain that she lost her bags. Marylinda hesitates, but Vernice offers to give her two dollars: one for her and one to pay for car fare to get to the bus stop. Joette is adamant that Vernice can’t afford it, but Marylinda takes the money and agrees to help.

A few days later, Annie goes to help Lulabelle with her sermon. Instead, Lulabelle tells her that they have paid off their debt. She gives Annie $10 for her and Babydoll, plus an extra $13 for Annie to keep out. When Annie asks about Bobo’s haunted shack, Lulabelle confirms that a ghost has lived there for years. When Annie explains how much it hurt Bobo, Lulabelle assures Annie that he is a good person.

The night before they leave, Bobo pays for Clyde and Babydoll to stay elsewhere, so that he and Annie can have the cabin to themselves. He asks Annie to be with him, but stresses that they don’t need to have sex. Annie wants him physically and romantically, so they have sex; it is Annie’s first time. The next morning, she feels as though her life has changed and that she is now an adult. She tells Bobo that she loves him.

Annie goes to see Lulabelle one last time. Lulabelle offers for Annie to stay with her, but Annie insists that she needs to go. Lulabelle replies that she doesn’t want to see Annie again, hoping that Annie will build a better life.