In post-World War II Mississippi, two families, one white and one black, struggle to survive in the Jim Crow south. "In Jordan's prize-winning debut, prejudice takes many forms, both subtle and brutal. It is 1946, and city-bred Laura McAllan is trying to raise her children on her husband's Mississippi Delta farm--a place she finds foreign and frightening. In the midst of the family's struggles, two young men return from the war to work the land....

In the summer of 1963, nine-year-old spitfire Starla Claudelle runs away from her strict grandmother's Mississippi home. Afraid Mamie will make good on her threat to send her to reform school, Starla starts walking to Nashville to find her momma, who went there when Starla was three. Out in the country, she accepts a ride from a black woman traveling with a white baby. And the trio embarks on a road trip that will change Starla's life forever.

In Mississippi in 1955, a sixteen-year-old finds himself at odds with his grandfather over issues surrounding the kidnapping and murder of a fourteen-year-old African American from Chicago.