In post-World War II Mississippi, two families, one white and one black, struggle to survive in the Jim Crow south. "In Jordan's prize-winning debut, prejudice takes many forms, both subtle and brutal. It is 1946, and city-bred Laura McAllan is trying to raise her children on her husband's Mississippi Delta farm--a place she finds foreign and frightening. In the midst of the family's struggles, two young men return from the war to work the land....

"A black veteran of the war in Afghanistan searches for his lost brother amid the chaos of Hurricane Katrina."--P. [4] of cover.

It is 1917 in the South Dakota Badlands and the summer has been hard. Rachel and Isaac DuPree had left Chicago fourteen years ago to stake their claim. Isaac, a former Buffalo Soldier, is fiercely proud: black families are rare in the West, and black ranchers even rarer. But it hasn't rained in months, the cattle are bellowing with thirst, and supplies have dwindled. Struggling to feed her family, Rachel is isolated by more than just geography. She...

"Los Angeles, 1965. Tempers have boiled over in the Watts neighborhood, sparked by the traffic stop of two Black motorists, the Frye brothers, by the Highway Patrol. Freelance crime photographer Harry Ingram is on the scene, capturing images of the cops as they unleash batons, dogs, and water hoses on the predominantly Black crowd. When he snaps proof of an unarmed man being shot down by the LAPD, he winds up in the hospital, beaten, his camera confiscated....