In 1963 in South Carolina, eleven-year-old twins Jez and Jay Turner begin lessons in rootwork, and their uncle's training offers them healing, protection, and a connection to their heritage even as they face threats from the local police deputy, school bullies, and others.

Biracial twin sisters--one who presents as black and the other as white--are determined to put the ghosts of the past to rest and to uncover the truth behind their parents' murders in the Jim Crow South. As infants, twin sisters Charlie Yates and Magnolia Heathwood were separated after the lynching of their parents, who died for loving across the color line. Now Charlie is a young Black organizer in Harlem, while white-passing Magnolia is the heiress...

Cash, Fitch, and Bird Thomas are three siblings in seventh grade together in Park, Delaware. In 1986, as the country waits expectantly for the launch of the Space Shuttle Challenger, they each struggle with their own personal anxieties. Cash, who loves basketball but has a newly broken wrist, is in danger of failing seventh grade for the second time. Fitch spends every afternoon playing Major Havoc at the arcade on Main. And Bird, his twelve-year-old...