Precocious 12-year-old Louisa Mae Cardinal lives inthe hectic New York City of 1940 with her family.Then tragedy strikes--and Lou and her younger brother,Oz, must go with their invalid mother to live on theirgreat-grandmother's farm in the Virginia mountains.Suddenly Lou finds herself coming of age in a newlandscape, making her first true friend, and experiencingadventures tragic, comic, and audacious. But the forcesof greed and justice are about to clash over her newhome . . . and as their struggle is played out in a crowdedVirginia courtroom, it will determine the future of twochildren, an entire town, and the mountains they love.