In 1926, nine-year-old Darby Carmichael stirs up trouble in Marlboro County, South Carolina, when she writes a story for the local newspaper promoting racial equality.

In 1919, fifteen-year-old Hank escapes an abusive father and goes looking for a chance to become a baseball player, accompanied by a man who calls himself Chief Sunrise and claims to be a full-blooded Seminole.

Huck escapes from the lonely cabin in which his drunken, brutal father had imprisoned him; on Jackson's island he meets Jim, a runaway slave. Together they float down the Mississippi River on a raft, occasionally stopping at the banks. In these brief episodes Huck participates in the lives of others, witnessing corruption, moral decay, and intellectual impoverishment. He learns from Jim of the dignity and worth of a human being.

Two lonely characters, one black and one white, meet on the street and become friends.

From Publishers Weekly: The Friendship, set in Mississippi in 1933, relates the unexpected consequences when Cassie Logan, the heroine of Taylor's Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, sees a black customer call a white storekeeper by his first name. In The Gold Cadillac, a black family encounters ignorance and prejudice during a drive from their Toledo home to Mississippi in their brand-new 1950 Cadillac. Both stories depict Taylor's customary sensitivity...

In 1957, Sylvia Patterson's life--that of a normal African American teenager--is disrupted by the impending integration of Little Rock's Central High when she is selected to be one of the first black students to attend the previously all white school. Includes author's note and related websites.