It's the summer of 1968 - the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., was recently assassinated, Nixon is about to become president, and 12-year-old Mildred Juniper Rhodes is in a quandary. Her daddy got a wild hair to move to Piedmont Ridge, S.C., to pastor a church filled with coloreds and whites - which isn't making much of anybody happy.When the town's crazy widow, a dairy farmer, becomes one of Mildred's only friends, Mildred realizes that things are bad. Add to that having to go to church in a run-down Bingo Hall, facing flaming threats of violence in her own front yard, and a run-in with a homeless man - it gets worse and worse.But when Miz Wanda Broomer's husband begins to leave bruises and cuts all over his wife's face and Mildred's daddy has to step in, this preacher's daughter finds herself in the middle of a heap of trouble. Will she be able to keep herself together long enough to save the day?