Twenty years after the trial of Tom Robinson, Jean Louise Finch--Scout--returns home to Maycomb to visit her father. She struggles with personal and political issues as her small Alabama town adjusts to the turbulent events beginning to transform the United States in the mid-1950s.

In 1954, 13-year-old Jubie, traveling with her family and her family's black maid Mary Luther--who has always been there for her, making up for her father's rages and her mother's neglect--encounters racial tension and tragedy.

"It is 1950. London is still reeling from World War II, and Margery Benson--a sensible schoolmarm and lonely spinster--is just trying to get through life. But one day, she reaches her breaking point, abandoning her job and her tidy, circumscribed life, to set out on an expedition to the other side of the world in search of an insect that may or may not exist: the golden beetle of New Caledonia, Margery's childhood obsession ever since her father gave...

Five teenage girls from upstate New York in the 1950s form a blood sisterhood to protect one another against the world and its oppressors, until their leader's disastrous act of revenge puts all their lives in turmoil.