PART ONE: Learning to Dance

Willson makes a detour to Brazil on a trip from Europe to Australia and becomes fascinated with Bahian culture and the daily reality of impoverished African-Brazilians living in Salvador’s vast shantytowns. She befriends Rita Conceição, the woman with whom she will eventually co-found Bahia Street.

Chapter One: Seduction
Chapter Two: The First Return
Chapter Three: Agnaldo and Candomblé
Chapter Four: Letting Salvador Inside
Chapter Five: Learning to Dance
Chapter Six: A Dangerous Embrace
Chapter Seven: Marginals
Chapter Eight: Sex and Friendship
Chapter Nine: Rain
Chapter Ten: Burnt Knives
Chapter Eleven: A Stranger

PART TWO: Treading Water

Willson and Conceição start to address the poverty they see all around them while Willson deals with the schism in her life between Seattle and Salvador. She meets an array of people throughout her journey in Bahia and beyond who shape her knowledge and understanding about local culture, poverty, and relationship between her two worlds.

Chapter Twelve: Encountering Seattle
Chapter Thirteen: Ideas
Chapter Fourteen: Life Change
Chapter Fifteen: Letting the Outer Skin be Social
Chapter Sixteen: Of Race and Remembrance
Chapter Seventeen: More Sides of Bahia
Chapter Eighteen: A View from the Abyss
Chapter Nineteen: Power and Presence
Chapter Twenty: Trust
Chapter Twenty One: Tall Poppy
Chapter Twenty Two: A Shadowed Color of Shade

PART THREE: Laughter Lessons

Willson and Conceição encounter a series of challenges that test their leadership abilities and resolve to make Bahia Street unique in its approach to social change. Willson experiences isolation and in the end jubilation as the Bahia Street Center becomes a reality.

Chapter Twenty Three: Leaves of Understanding
Chapter Twenty Four: Love
Chapter Twenty Five: Barriers of Glass
Chapter Twenty Six: Storms
Chapter Twenty Seven: Sharing a Lifeboat
Chapter Twenty Eight: Heartbreak
Chapter Twenty Nine: Evolution
Chapter Thirty: Resting on the Wings of a Butterfly