Cassie Logan is the feisty 9-year-old daughter of David and Mary Logan. The Logans live on a 400-acre farm near Strawberry, Mississippi, in 1933. Cassie and her three brothers attend a dismal, ill-equipped and ill-heated school where they study from cast-off books--or no books at all. Every day, they walk miles to school, past the large white school building with its manicured lawn and sports field. The driver of the whites-only school bus makes a sport of trying to run the Logans off the road, and his passengers laugh and jeer as the children are covered with dust or splashed with mud.

Finally, Stacey, Cassie's 12-year-old brother, hatches a plan to stop the bus driver, at least for a while. One rainy October day, the four Logan children spend their lunch hour digging deep, wide holes across the road. It pours all afternoon, and the runoff creates...