Preview of Gold Dust Summary:

Richard Riley Moncrief, a seventh-grader at St. Colmcille's, cares only about one thing in his life: baseball. From the hot summer days to the freezing Boston winters, Richard lives baseball, whether daydreaming in school or freezing his fingers off in February hitting frozen ice balls. Life is simple for Richard in his small, working-class neighborhood, and more importantly, he wants to keep it simple, but the racial tensions of 1974 Boston keep seeping in. While segregated schools were ruled unconstitutional decades earlier, in Boston the racial makeup of schools often did not change with the Brown v. Board of Education ruling. In the fall of 1974, Boston began busing students out of their own neighborhood schools and into schools across the city, trying to achieve a racially diverse student body. Some parents objected, instead sending their children to private schools, like St. Colmcille's.

Despite the turmoil of the 1974-75 school...