During the Depression, a rural African-American family deeply attached to the forest on their land tries to save it from being cut down by an unscrupulous white man.
A young girl fights to keep her mother out of the mental ward, her home away from the bank, and herself out of the orphanage after her father abandons her and her mother in depression-era Alabama.
During the hard times of 1932, a poor shoe shine man gives a child his cap, gloves, and an angel made from a spool, then receives a wonderful gift in return.
In 1939, unable to find regular jobs because of the Great Depression, long-time friends Cal Chin and Barney Young tour the country as members of a Chinese American basketball team.
In 1932, during the Depression in Ohio, thirteen-year-old Rudy, determined to help his family weather the hard times, hops a train going west to California and experiences the hobo life.
"When the patriarch of twelve-year-old Bean's sharecropping community dies, Bean gets a lesson in not only what it means to lose someone you love, but also in how his family and friends care for their dead"--Provided by publisher.
