Eleven-year-old Callie, Wendell, Jim and Thomas are four children who are linked by an old golden retriever, and not much else. Their stories wend their way toward each other like the poison ivy-strewn paths through the woods surrounding a dilapidated Civil War-era cabin. Callie is sure it must be haunted: "That place felt funny. Felt cold and, well, occupied." Callie, who is black, and her new companion Wendell, who is white, work together to get to the root of the ever-expanding mystery about the cabin, the dog and Jim, a boy who drowned a long time ago. But the town of Celeste is not ready for a black girl and a white boy to walk down the street together, let alone join forces, nor are they ready for an action the black newspaper is advocating--to integrate the local swimming pool. The feeling of injustice is old news to Callie in this "mean old world," but Wendell is just starting to wake up to the sting of it.
The unsettled ghosts of the drowned Jim and of Thomas, a once-enslaved boy, overlap in the cabin, neither one ready to cross the proverbial--and literal--river to allow their spirits finally to rest. Callie and Wendell--troubled spirits in their own right--form a near-friendship based on what they can share, with a cautious hope for a future without boundaries between black and white. --Emilie Coulter, freelance writer and editor