JOY is an eight-year-old half-Filipina and half-African American who lives with her mentally unstable Filipina mother, MERCY in the province. Growing up with a cold relationship with her mother, she was made to believe by her grandmother that her father has been absent in their lives because he is on the moon. With so much void in her early life, Joy grapples with her own identity. Joy finds out that her mother plans to leave for Manila to move on from the past without her and start anew. Joy pursues a "journey to the moon" to find her father, believing that being reunited with him will stop her mother from abandoning her. She does this with the help of a new teacher from her school, an American Peace Corp volunteer, FAITH. Faith starts to act more like a mother to Joy, and Mercy starts to feel an unexpected maternal jealousy and loses the smallest amount of sanity left in her.