An evocative, delicately comic story of a girl’s coming of age. Born in 1949 in a private blacks-only hospital in rural Georgia, Lena is the third child and longed-for first daughter of Nellie and Jonah, who own the local bar and liquor store. From the moment of her birth in a rural black hospital in Georgia, Lena McPherson is recognized as a special child, with the power to see ghosts and predict the future. Despite her extraordinary talent, Lena is most memorable for the ordinariness of her everyday life: her first friendships, her years at school, her observations of her parents' sometimes stormy relationship, her grief at her grandmother's death.--Adapted from publisher description.