Ten-year-old Gracie sits on the backyard picnic table, hugging Brown Hound, wiping her nose on the dog\'s fur.
In this time of segregation and inequality, can the girls unearth Marcell\'s secrets? Why must they find a missing grave? And what time-worn promise exposed will reveal the family\'s hidden past?.
Gracie and Jane must fix this before Brown Hound gets sent away.
Her dark skin shines but not her eyes; her history is mysteriously entwined with the family, and for some inexplicable reason she hates dogs.
But there is also Marcell, the solitary woman who keeps the house.
The girls hunt for ancient graves, sneak visits to the conjure woman, fight, make up, and sleep in the same bed, tangled like puppies.
It is wild and heady freedom, far from her mother\'s scorn and her father\'s indifference.
Great Granny Jane smokes a pipe and is fast with her cane, Miss Emily is loving but firm, and Jane, her cousin of the same age, has a swashbuckler\'s heart.
It\'s 1951 on the NC family farm when Gracie and Brown Hound meet the family.
They are too much for her high-strung mother.
Her daddy is sending them both to her grandmother for the summer.
Ten-year-old Gracie sits on the backyard picnic table, hugging Brown Hound, wiping her nose on the dog\'s fur
