When the Great Depression collides disastrously with Anne "Perri" Singleton's privileged life, a friendship blossoms with Mary Dobbs Dillard, a fiercely individualistic minister's daughter.

Twelve-year-old Clyde Thomason's older brother is a guard on the Freedom Train, which is carrying the Bill of Rights and other documents throughout the country in 1948, but Clyde is also learning about rights and freedom as he is saved from a beating by an African American boy, and later returns the favor when men in their Atlanta suburb decide to show the "Nigras" their place.