The lives of Paula and Al Johnson and their twin sons in a small, almost exclusively African-American town in northern Missouri appear stable enough. Paula and Al have grown up in affluence: Al as the son of the town's most successful citizen, its mayor and newspaper owner; Paula as the pampered daughter of an entrepreneurial mother in St. Louis, part of a set of well-to-do black families whose children go to the best schools, attend dancing classes together, and socialize with one another.

When we meet them, Al is reluctantly running for mayor, the twins are feuding, and Paula is hanging on. Then Paula's cantankerous mother-in-law, Miss Xenobia Kezee, sick and old, arrives from St. Paul, where she has lived since the death of her beloved second husband. Miss Kezee is independent. She is blunt, tough, and opinionated. She wants to go home, away from memories of her first husband, Al's father, and she openly resents Paula's well-intended caregiving.

As Paula struggles to move from antagonism to common ground with Miss Kezee, she faces the substantial issues in her life: her own mother's lonely death, which still haunts her; and her husband's minimal engagement with the emotional life of his family. In Somebody Else's Mama, David Haynes beautifully unfolds a story of the yearning for a significant family life.