Louise Collins is a thirteen-year-old girl living in the Ninth Ward of New Orleans in 1960. The local school, William J. Frantz Elementary, is facing its first trial with intergration as a 6-year-old girl named Ruby Bridges is escorted everyday to class by FBI agents.

The parents in the neifhborhood are so concerned that they have all pulled their children out of the school to boycott it. As a result Ruby is the only students. A number of the mothers have formed a small group that gets together every morning just as school is starting in order to taunt poor Ruby. The group is called the Cheerleaders, and they are actually mentioned by John Steinbeck in his classic travelogue Travels with Charley.

Louise's mother is actually one of the women who participates in the group. She admits that she doesn't find this shocking since just about everyone in the Ninth Ward is against integration beacuast that is just the way it has always been.

Things become even more interested when Louise and her mother Pauline get a new boarder for their boarding house. His name is Morgan Miller, and he is a charming Yankee who has come back to his hometown to try to mend troubles with his older brother after years of not talking together. Morgan quickly finds himself enmeshed in the family who runs the house, and they with him.

Readers get a first-hand account of how rough things got during the Civil Rights Movement era as the Klan takes an interest in Morgan. There is no questino that the book is truly edgy, but it is also honest about the horrors of what our country faced as it was confronted with the idea of providing African Americans with equal rights.

There is a very rough scene that makes this book problematic for younger readers, but I don't think I would have trouble with giving this to older middle school students.

Louise's voice is fresh and easily pulls the reader into her story. She is honest, frank, an makes the reader care about what happens to her and the people around her.