Cranston Public Library

Jeremy Simms watches from the porch of the general store as the weekly bus from Jackson comes through his town. His neighbor Stacey Logan and Stacey's brothers and sister are there to see their grandmother off on a trip. Jeremy's friend Josias Williams is taking the bus to his new job. But Josias and the Logans are black, and in Mississippi in the 1930s, black people can't ride the bus if that means there won't be enough room for white people to ride....

Growing up in a hardscrabble West Virginia mining town, Melody Logan often wished that her flighty, movie-star-gorgeous mother, Haille, wasn't so unhappy. But in the warmth of her wonderful father's unwavering love, Melody always felt safe and secure - until a dreadful mining accident tore her from her family's moorings. Melody was still devastated by her father's death when she came home from school to find her mother gaily packing suitcases. Soon...

After losing her mother and step-father in fatal accidents, Melody Logan is settling in with her East coast relations, when the appearance of her mother's picture in a catalog sends her back to California to seek her out.

"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...