(Taken from the book jacket)

I don't know how my brother came to see everything upside down from me.  For him, night is day, sleep is awake.  It's as thoough time is split between us, and we only pass by each other as the sun rises or sets.  Usually, for me, that's enough.

So complains Morning Girl, a twelve-year-old Taino who, in alternating chapters with her younger brother, star Boy, vividly re-creates life on a Bahamian island in 1492.  Morning Girl's and Star Boy's lives are, like any sister's and brother's, deeply intertwined, and their family is bound together by respect and humor, tradition and shared imagination.  But Morning Girl and Star Boy are as different as day and night, and they must each work her or his own way through the inevitable complications of growing up.

When Morning Girl is curious about what people see when they look at her, Star Boy, impatient, sees no sense in asking a question with such an obvious answer: "They see you."  Yet during a hurricane, when he is swept off balance completely in the howling wind and crashing rain, Star Boy recalls his sister's face and is not afraid.

Star Boy and Morning Girl and their parents and friends live in a vibrant community that strives to coexist with the natural world, not to dominate it; that expects visitors to be interesting new friends, not dangerous.  All's as it's always been until the day Morning Girl goes out for a swim and sees a fat canoe, packed with oddly dressed strangers, rowing toward shore.  She tries not to laugh - she's been taught to always be polite - and invites the visitors to land.