Thirteen-year-old George, spending the summer of 1955 working in his grandmother's store in Obadiah, Alabama, becomes involved with helping his African-American friends, Esther and Bennett, solve the mystery of their father's disappearance.
In the summer of 1964, a thirteen-year-old white boy whose best friend is black is caught in the middle when civil rights workers and Ku Klux Klan members clash in a small town near Tupelo, Mississippi.
