Its hard to be a Black Sheep Baxter, at least for 12-year-old Polly. From a poor white family, Pollys best friend, Timbre Ann Biggs, is black, making them the only salt-and-pepper friends in town. Her mom keeps secrets, her dad turns to the devils drink, and her rich, mean Meemaw makes Sunday dinners a chore. But in that fall of 1959, life in quiet Holcolm County starts to heat up. One by one, thriving colored businesses burn to the ground. When someone throws a note wrapped around a brick through the window of Biggs Repair, Polly worries that Timbre Ann will be blinded by the color of her skin and forget they were ever as close as Pollys mom and Timbre Anns Aunt Henri have always been. When a tragic fire brings everything to a head, the spotlight falls on Pollys family. Sensitively painting a vivid portrait of the Jim Crow South, Pollys inspiring story captures the defiant spirit of youth in an oppressive small town, just as the seeds of the Civil Rights Movement begin to sprout.