The landmark 1954 Supreme Court ruling, Brown v. Board of Education, brought the promise of integration to Little Rock, Arkansas, but it was hard-won for the nine black teenagers chosen to integrate Central High School in 1957. They ran the gauntlet between a rampaging mob and the heavily armed Arkansas National Guard, dispatched by Governor Orval Faubus to subvert federal law and bar them from entering the school. President Dwight D. Eisenhower responded...

The author describes the threats and emotional abuse she endured from white student and adults along with her fears of endangering her family as she commited to being one of the first African American students to integrate Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957.

Civil rights heroine Melba Patillo Beals puts readers right in her saddle oxfords as she struggles to understand and fight back against the laws that told her she was less just because of the color of her skin.