A gentle story of a young island girl waiting for her mother to come home from work, far away on the mainland.

Cecile lives on an island in the West Indies with her grandparents while her mother looks for work on the mainland. Much as she loves her grandparents, Cecile is lonely, and spends her days waiting for her mother to return from across the sea.

As the summer passes, Cecile teaches her grandmother to read and write. She listens to the village storyteller’s tales of the sea, and makes a beautiful picture with shells and sand to remind Mama of home. At long last, a letter comes for Cecil, and she crosses the sea to visit the Mama she has missed so much.