It's the hurricane season of 1954, and tropical storms are raging. For Genevieve, other storms are also brewing. In the conservative beach town of Easton, North Carolina, the Wompers, a new family, are making waves with their outspoken opinions. Easton High School even becomes the center of local attention when the Wompers petition the school to teach about the dangers of atomic testing. Genevieve now needs to figure out where she stands and then decide how far she is willing to go to support her own beliefs. Set against the background of the cold war, Senator McCarthy's anticommunist crusade, and one of the most active hurricane seasons on record, this historical novel portrays a community battling nature and social change through the eyes of an unusually observant young woman....

Thirteen-year-old Maggie Pugh has lived in Kinship, Georgia, all her life.
In all that time almost nothing has changed. If you are poor, you live on the
west side of town. If you are rich, you live on the hill in the north end and
get to go boating at the country club in Troy. If you are white you use one
bathroom at Byer's Drugs and if you are colored you use another.

All that starts to change in the summer of 1960. It is the summer when Maggie's
younger sister, Gardenia, triumphs in the Hayes County Little Miss Contest. It
is the summer when Maggie must decide whether or not to tell anyone about the
horrible thing she saw. Most of all it's the summer of Maggie's first camera, a
tool that becomes a way for her to find independence and a different kind of
truth.
...