Twenty-four-year old Iris rides for her crew - Ila, Rashida, Clarke, Sage and Toya - and holds them down through the uncertainties of love, family feuds and life's other disappointments. She often wishes that she could control them like the lines in one of her poems, but the ups and downs in her tight female relationships require more than a profound observation or dope metaphor to handle. The rise and fall of issues that shape them into women were harder to deal with than turning the page in a book and none of them know how long Iris can carry the weight of being her sisters' keeper.Malcolm, Iris' fiancé, is CEO of an emerging African American magazine and being with him is her greatest joy but she fears being a good wife means giving up her identity. She wants to build their marriage into a healthy and strong union but there were no guarantees that she wouldn't fail. Will her insecurities disrupt their happy ending before it begins? Can she balance his needs without neglecting her girls? She knows that trusting has unforeseeable consequences, but the ultimate betrayal causes her to wonder if she has become a slave to her own loyalty.Set in the late '90s, Tea Leaves is an intimate look at the complex details and complications involved in sharing life with other women, walking in sisterhood, trying to support bad choices, dysfunctional habits and accepting uncensored judgment. Told in alternating perspectives, each woman chronicles her struggle to comfortably wear her imperfections in a world full of perfect expectation as each figures out how to win in life.