Gloriana faces her twelfth birthday in 1964 and struggles with the changes she sees happening around her, but while she struggles to understand the shift in her relationships with her sister--who is about to enter high school--and her best friend, Frankie, Gloriana witnesses tempers rise in a debate over a segregated public pool.

This book takes the reader on an incredible journey from the Jim Crow South to the jungles of the Philippines during World War II, from an insane asylum to a courtroom where a murder trial plays out. The trial concerns Pete Banning, a decorated World War II hero, and patriarch of a prominent southern Methodist family, who calmly shoots his friend and pastor, and then declares that he has nothing to say in explanation or defense. Reminiscent of Southern...