In the days and weeks following the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, Samar, who is of Punjabi heritage but has been raised with no knowledge of her past by her single mother, strives to learn about her family's history and get in touch with the grandparents her mother shuns.
When dead teenagers who have come back to life start showing up at her high school, Phoebe, a goth girl, becomes interested in the phenomenon, and when she starts dating a "living impaired" boy, they encounter prejudice, fear, and hatred.
Paul-Edward, the son of a part-Indian, part-African slave mother and a White plantation owner father, finds himself caught between the two worlds of his parents as he pursues his dream of owning land in the aftermath of the Civil War.
Suspicious of sixteen-year-old Marnie, a newcomer to their village, the residents accuse her of witchcraft when she discovers that the village madman is not crazy but deaf and she begins to communicate with him through hand gestures.
When the Fickett family decides to adopt an African-American child, they are faced with threats, angry phone calls, a burning cross on the lawn, and an ultimatum from their oldest daughter.
Thirteen-year-old George, spending the summer of 1955 working in his grandmother's store in Obadiah, Alabama, becomes involved with helping his African-American friends, Esther and Bennett, solve the mystery of their father's disappearance.
In 1862, after Union forces expel Hannah's family from Holly Springs, Mississippi, because they are Jews, Hannah reexamines her views regarding slavery and the war.
In 1832, Prudence Crandall begins admitting black girls to her exclusive Connecticut school, scandalizing white society and eventually causing her arrest and the closing of her school.
Twelve-year-old Cass meets her new African-American neighbor, Jemmie, and despite their families' prejudices, they build a strong friendship around their mutual talent for running and a pact to read Jane Eyre.
