Leonora is the protagonist of the novel. She is a 12-year-old African American girl who lives with her father in a rooming house in town. She is talented, bright, and loves to read, but is living in a time when the Ku Klux Klan has resurfaced, and abusers at school—particularly by the 18-year-old Merlin—torment her at school.

Living alone with her father, grieving her mother’s death, and without friends, Leonora is tremendously lonely. The only person who will speak with her is a six-year-old Jewish girl, Esther, who is also an outcast in the town. Leonora’s anger at racist injustices she suffers is ferocious, and her quick temper also keeps other children and adults at bay. She desires to drop out of school to escape the persecution, but her father will not let her. When she rescues Esther from an onrushing train, however, Leonora becomes a hero to the townspeople who are not under the Klan’s pervasive influence.

When Leonora befriends an old, nearly blind Civil War Veteran named Mr. Field, learns tolerance toward others. Mr. Fields tells her that she cannot punish everyone around her because she has to be a Black girl in a white world, and his courage in standing up against racial injustice helps her to forgive even the worst of her tormenters.