Ten-year-old Cassie Logan lives with her family on a 400-acre farm in rural Mississippi in 1934. The adults in the household are her parents, David and Mary, and David’s mother, Big Ma. Cassie has three brothers. The eldest is 13-year-old Stacey and two younger brothers called Christopher-John and Little Man. The Logans are a Black family that experiences racial prejudice typical of the South during this era. Despite the restrictions placed on their existence, the Logans are financially better off than their neighbors, who are sharecroppers or day laborers.

One evening in November, Cassie’s father and her siblings visit their neighbors, where the conversation immediately turns to the impending trial of T. J. Avery, a Black teen caught breaking into a local hardware store. His two white companions, the Simms brothers, crack the safe and accidentally kill the shop owner, leaving TJ to take the blame.

As the grown-ups speculate whether TJ will get a trial rather than simply being lynched, the children go outside to shoot marbles. Cassie wants to win a large blue-green marble from another boy, but her father intervenes. David breaks up the game and insists that everyone return their winnings. Afterward, on the ride back home, he forbids his children to play marbles.