Explores the classic themes of good and evil in a story about a perverse undertaker who won't let the dead rest.

"A son teaches his father how to write his name so he can vote for the first time in this historical tale filled with warmth and strength by Coretta Scott King Honor winner Colin Bootman's expressive oil paintings. In a new author's note, veteran teacher and author Gwendolyn Battle-Lavert expands upon the obstacles facing African American voters in the aftermath of the Civil War and the fight to end voter suppression that goes on even today. Simms...

Hoping that the arrival of Freedom Riders in her town will help her community shed its antiquated views, thirteen-year-old Billie is forced to confront her own mindset when things turn tragic. "Personally I don't mind them coming here but they might bother some of my customers. Thirteen-year old Billie Sims has heard things like this all her life, from the grocer down the road, from her neighbors at church, from her parents. But Billie never understood...

In the early 1960s, ten-year-old Rachel sees changes in her family and her small Southern town as she tries to sort out how she feels about her young black maid, racial prejudice, and her responsibility for her own life. Isabella, a black housekeeper, helps ten-year-old Rachel sort out issues of friendship, racism, and prejudice, and teaches her that the only way to learn is by heart.

It is June first and twelve-year-old Mary does not really understand what is happening: she does not understand the hatred and greed of the white men who are forcing her Cherokee family out of their home in New Echota, Georgia, capital of the Cherokee Nation, and trying to steal what few things they are allowed to take with them, she does not understand why a soldier killed her grandfather--and she certainly does not understand how she, her sister,...

A baby daughter dies in the hot sun because the father, supposed to be looking after her, is drunk. This is one of the many dirty secrets to emerge as a Southern family gathers for the funeral of one of its members.

In 1949, Jake Hamrick, a 19-year-old who has been obsessed since childhood with the ivory-billed woodpecker, leaves Illinois for Louisiana accompanied by Robin, his tiny girlfriend. They search in the bayous where the bird was last reported, and Robin, as obsessed as Jake, dresses like the bird, smearing her naked body with white clay, wearing a cloak of black crow feathers, her hair in a red crest. Local hunters pursue Robin and Jake deep into the...

In the early 1980s, Milton Menger, a wealthy art dealer living in New Jersey, is called by an estranged friend, Charles Trembleman. Charley is a traveling salesman for the Singer Sewing Company and his hands have just been badly burned in a motel fire near Memphis. He needs a driver so he can continue traveling and selling. Together they embark on a journey across the South, visiting showrooms and staying in locally owned motels. Is it a coincidence...

Three unlikely thieves, or reivers, 11-year-old Lucius Priest and two of his family's retainers, set out from Mississippi for Memphis in 1905 in a stolen motorcar.