South of Little Rock

A powerful story of race, family, and small town life in the South in the 1950s.

When the Little Rock Central High School desegregation crisis sends shock waves across the nation in 1957, widower Sam Tate, a white merchant and councilman with two young children, faces new questions of conscience, belief, and child-rearing in tiny Unionville, Arkansas. Becky Reeves, an unmarried northerner who has come south to teach while hiding a secret past, must decide how to approach current events in her seventh-grade class without getting fired. Gran Tate, a strong-willed woman who likes quilting and helping raise her grandchildren, dislikes blacks and Yankees and fears she may lose everything she holds dear.

Life gets more complicated for all of them when Governor Faubus calls out the National Guard to stop the integration of Central High, President Eisenhower sends federal troops to enforce it, and Unionville editor Preston Upshaw fans the flames of...