In 1927 stonemason Zoli Mednick is chosen to carve a tombstone for a prominent North Texan. He moves his family from the community of Westland in Central Texas, where almost everyone is Czech and Catholic, to Castle Falls, where Czechs are outsiders and everyone attends the Baptist and Methodist churches. Fifteen-year-old Sari Mednick's biggest concern is making friends--she wants to be as popular in her new school as she was in Westland.
But even as she faces prejudice and snobbery and yearns for Westland and her friends there--including that special young man--Sari is drawn into much...