Frightened that their baby sister Dineo will die, thirteen-year-old Naledi and her younger brother Tiro run away from their grandmother to Johannesburg to find their mother, who works there as a maid. Their journey illustrates at every turn the grim realities of apartheid - the pass laws, bantustans, racism, the breakdown of family life., The opulence of the white "Madam's" house contrasts starkly with the reality that Naledi and Tiro face - that their baby sister is suffering from starvation, not an incurable disease.