It's 1966 and 10-year-old Chicago native Hannah Jordan spends every summer with her grandparents in Deltona, Mississippi. This particular summer, the new house the Jordans were about to move into on Chicago's barely integrated South Side has been burned to the ground. So Hannah and her siblings are sent south while her parents look for new living quarters. When a white resident of Deltona forbids Hannah to drink out of the only working water fountain on the hottest day ever, Hannah sets out to end segregation by any means necessary. Never does it occur to her that she might wind up in jail or, worse yet, dead!