Life for 12-year-old Ruby Johnson is tough. Harshness and prejudice fill every moment of her difficult, but stable reality. Then, on one fateful afternoon, everything she thought she knew changed.

Black Town and the Pickney Plantation are young Ruby’s whole world. With hardworking parents and a hardworking older brother, sharecropping is all they know—and all they ever will know. But she secretly dreams of getting away and using her mind to make a living, not her back.

When she goes to work for the aging Mrs. Fields in nearby Roswell, Ruby is forced to confront the ugliness of the world around her. She finds an unlikely ally in the older woman and befriends the daughter of the Pickney Plantation owners.

As she settles into a new routine, a brutal attack throws the towns into chaos. Fingers quickly point to Black Town—more specifically, her brother—and tensions between Black Town and the affluent Roswell reach an all-time high.

It’s up to Ruby to try and draw the truth out of the now mute victim, and whatever remains of her childhood is shattered as she struggles with truth and perception in an unjust world.

But will the truth really set her brother free? Or does the hatred around her run too deep?