Young Cassie Logan endures humiliation and witnesses the racism of the KKK as they embark on a cross-burning rampage, before she fully understands the importance her family attributes to having land of their own.

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.

"Cassie Logan, first met in Song of the Trees and Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, is a young woman now, searching for her place in the world, a journey that takes her from Toledo to California, to law school in Boston, and, ultimately, in the 60s, home to Mississippi to participate in voter registration. She is witness to the now-historic events of the century: the Great Migration north, the rise of the civil rights movement, preceded and precipitated...

Sadistically teased by two white boys in 1940's rural Mississippi, a black youth severely injures one of the boys with a tire iron and enlists Cassie's help in trying to flee the state.

During a heavy rainstorm in 1930s rural Mississippi, a ten-year-old white boy sees a bus driver order all the black passengers off a crowded bus to make room for late-arriving white passengers and then set off across the raging Rosa Lee River.

In Mississippi in the early 1900s, ten-year-old David Logan's family generously shares their well water with both white and African-American neighbors in an atmosphere of potential racial violence.

"¿Por qué es la tierra tan importante para la familia de Cassie? Los acontecimientos de un año agitado--el año de los hombres de la noche y de los incendios, el año en que una muchacha blanca humilló a Cassie en público porque era negra--sirvieron para que Cassie se diera cuenta de que tener un lugar propio constituye el alma de la familia Logan. El valor y el orgullo de los Logan se los da la tierra, porque sin importar cuánto los puedan...