"Stifled by tragedy, thirteen-year-old Grace Mockingbird yearns to escape her mother's controlling, grieving hand and find her voice in a small Kentucky coal mining town. A tragic family loss has driven a wedge between Grace and her mother, who seems to be silently punishing Grace by withholding her love. Grace does penance in every chore while doubting she'll ever earn her mother's forgiveness. But change arrives with the hot winds of summer as the...

In Stillwater, Missippi, in 1955, thirteen-year-old African American Rose Lee Carter looks to her family and friends to understand her place in the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement.

As the civil rights struggle heats up in 1967 Texas, two families--one white, one black--find common ground. The white family, from a notoriously racist neighborhood in the suburbs, and the black family, from its poorest ward, cross Houston's color line to win the freedom of five black college students unjustly charged with the murder of a policeman.

Six fictional characters, in cycles of linked poems, relate their memories of the historic day in 1963 when more than 250,000 people from across the United States joined together to march on Washington, D.C., calling for civil and economic rights for African Americans.

"The bestselling author of White Collar Girl and What the Lady Wants explores one woman's journey of self-discovery set against the backdrop of a musical and social revolution. In the middle of the twentieth century, the music of the Mississippi Delta arrived in Chicago, drawing the attention of entrepreneurs like the Chess brothers. Their label, Chess Records, helped shape that music into the Chicago Blues, the soundtrack for a transformative era...