From her earliest memory - a three-year-old slamming her head against a locked gate to stop her father reaching the casino - Eleanor knows she is on her own. Raised by a violent mother and an absent father, she is eventually sent to a children's home while her family pretends nothing is wrong. The one person who sees her clearly is her grandfather, who hands her banned books and teaches her to think. Cayenne follows Eleanor's journey from that silenced childhood through early adulthood, toward the hard, quiet freedom she builds entirely by herself.