In 1936, three children meet at the Mercy Home for Negro Orphans in New York State, and while not all three are orphans, they are all dealing with grief and loss which together, along with the help of a sympathetic staff member and the boxing matches of Joe Louis, they manage to overcome. Includes author's notes.

Louis, who loves baseball despite being the worst stickball player in White Plains, New York, sees his opportunity to be bat boy for the 1961 Yankees team as the perfect way to escape the problems of his father's remarriage and moving to the suburbs.

"The murder of Judge Hugo Jackson is out of Detective Simon Ziele's jurisdiction in more ways than one. It's high profile enough to command the attention of the notorious new police commissioner, since Judge Jackson was presiding over the sensationalist trial of Al Drayson. Drayson, an anarchist, set off a bomb at a Carnegie wedding, but instead of killing millionaires, it killed passersby, including a child. Furthermore, Simon's assigned precinct...

Seventh-grader Lewis "Shoe" Blake from the Tuscarora Reservation has a new friend, George Haddonfield from the local Air Force base, but in 1975 upstate New York there is a lot of tension and hatred between Native Americans and Whites--and Lewis is not sure that he can rely on friendship.