Jenness Clark has grown up on an island in the Mississippi River. Upon graduation from sixth grade, she embarks on a trip to visit extended family in the region, a journey that takes her from her family's island farm,-primitive, with no telephone or electricity-in southern Missouri, and brings her facte-to-face with the social revolution that is sweeping across America in the turbulent 1960's-all seen through the lens of the contrasting home currents within her own family.