Mistreated by their cruel uncle, a backwoods brother and sister find refuge in the schoolhouse where they spend the winter hiding with their teacher and senile grandfather.
Orphaned, fourteen-year-old Hambone accompanies the circuit-riding preacher, Old Blue Tilley, on his rounds high up in Ozark mountains and everywhere they go they find that Oxalee, Old Blue's sworn enemy, has been there before them.
Left with her four brothers and sisters in the care of a cruel grandmother who resents their existence, an eleven-year-old girl struggles for survival in a poor Arkansas hill community.
Thirteen-year-old Toby living in the Arkansas hills with her Granny relates the dramatic events of the summer that changed and improved their daily life.
