The First Year It Sleeps

In 1955, when the threat of polio sends the neighborhood kids out of the August heat to nap in the afternoons, meeting on the Henry family's front stoop in the evenings becomes the highlight of their day. Five of them - Kate, Charlie, Will, Sonny, and Bucky - send each other off on different dares, beginning at the abandoned Civil War-era manor that sits at the entrance to their neighborhood, stepping past crumbling headstones in its eerie gated cemetery, and peering through the windows of a cabin behind it. When they see a tall, muscular Negro sitting at a kitchen table, a book and a beer in front of him, they decide to make him the target of their games, naming him "Tramp" because to them what else could he be?The evening games end when Sonny vanishes. Karena, Kate's younger sister, sneaks out for adventures of her own, defying the boundaries of segregation by befriending a young black girl named Lilly who lives in a former servant bungalow across from the manor. Their friendship grows until trusting each other they visit the manor together, sneaking inside with a key Lilly had hidden. It was during this visit that Karena realizes Lilly knows more about the missing boy than she is telling. Using the words of Rosa Parks, "You must never be fearful about what you are doing when it is right," she convinces Lilly to come forward and together they solve the mystery of Sonny's disappearance. A racist police lieutenant, an over-zealous night watchman, and a determined prosecutor watch in disbelief as the young girls testify in court telling what they saw the night Sonny disappeared.