Told entirely through notes, grocery receipts, report cards, bottle caps, newspaper clippings, and other pieces of a young girl’s life, this is the story of Ginny’s seventh-grade year.
Twelve-year-old Annie ponders the many rhythms of life the year that her mother becomes pregnant, her grandfather begins faltering, and her best friend (and running partner) becomes distant.
In 1963, Pearl, an eleven-year-old black girl in Fairfax, Virginia, learns about the real nature of friendship from the popular but untrustworthy Lenore, and Artemesia, a poor girl who moves into the neighborhood for a brief time.
Simon and Edward are boyhood friends, but they are also slave and master. When Simon runs away and joins the black soldiers in the Union Army, Edward and his family endure the siege of Petersburg from the opposite side.
