On a train heading north to Chicago to escape, Jesse is covered in blood and trying to piece together previous events.
What he knows is that he fits into the mold of Corinth, Mississippi as well as any twelve-year-old white child with a best friend who was black in the year 1919.
After a moment in childhood watching his close friend Kitch nearly die at the hands of some older white children, Jesse arranged a secret friendship in the fields of Scipio, Kitch's father, farm.
As age brings division, their friendship is tested in the face of growing tensions in the south in light of the regular lynchings of the Klu Klux Klan, pressure from his family to hate all blacks, and a secret that could lead to his death.