San Antonio College Library

In 1948, eleven-year-old Audrey lives with her father, mother, and three younger sisters in Jewell Valley, a coal mining camp in Southwest Virginia, where her mother still mourns the death of a baby, her father goes on drinking binges on paydays, and Audrey tries to recover from the scarlet fever that has left her skinny and needing to wear glasses.

When he finds a lost beagle in the hills behind his West Virginia home, Marty tries to hide it from his family and the dog's real owner, a mean-spirited man known to shoot deer out of season and to mistreat his dogs.

In 1955, Woodrow and his cousin Gypsy befriend a new girl in their seventh grade class in rural Virginia, and the three of them set off to find Woodrow's missing mother, encountering unlikely and intriguing coincidences along the way.