Enrolled in school after her mother's death, Possum resolves to preserve her mother's homeschooling lessons by proving she already knows everything, an unsuccessful endeavor complicated by her teacher's attraction to Possum's father.
A family living in the Appalachian Mountains in the 1930s gets books to read during the regular visits of the "Book Woman"--a librarian who rides a pack horse through the mountains, lending books to the isolated residents