Evan Pao and his family move to Haddington, Virginia in hopes of keeping his father's notoriety a secret, but a small southern town is not an easy place for a Chinese-American boy to fit in, and one kid, Brady Griggs, seems determined to make things difficult. A fresh start. That's all Evan Pao wants as he, along with his mother and sister, flee from California to Haddington, Virginia, hoping to keep his father's notoriety a secret. But Haddington...

In the early 1950s, Lydia Hawkins has grown up poor in the Appalachian Mountains of West Virginia with her widowed mother, brother BJ, who has cystic fibrosis, and her Gran, but when Gran and BJ die and her mother is jailed unjustly, Lydia must try to remain strong and clear her mother's name, even after she learns a shocking secret from the uncle with whom she is sent to live.

As Esme introduces her stuffed animal collection that is alphabetically arranged from Alvin the aardvark to Zelda the zebra she also relates her family's military life and her father's deployment.

"The year is 1867, and the South has lost the Civil War. Those on the lowest rungs, like Shad's family, fear that the freed slaves will take the few jobs available. In this climate of despair and fear, a group has formed. Today we know it as the KKK"--