Pearl, a 13-year-old runaway orphan, roams the countryside of Mississippi disguised as a boy in the company of a hobo called Newt, in the year 1922. When she finds him dead from fusel oil poisoning, she's cast adrift until a well-to-do family takes her in. She is soon befriended by their niece, Marguerite, a gifted young artist confined to a wheelchair. But can Pearl escape her past and the dark secrets that threaten her new home? And how can she protect Marguerite from her greedy, ambitious mother, who wishes to bask in her own daughter's glory and separate the girls from their precious friendship, the first either of them have ever known? New illustrated edition!