Winner of the Newbery Medal and an acknowledged landmark in children's literature, Sounder traces the keen sorrow and abiding faith of a poor African-American boy in the 19th-century South. The boy's father is a sharecropper, struggling to feed his family in hard times. Night after night, he and his great coon dog, Sounder, return to the cabin empty-handed. Then, one day, he succeeds in bringing something home. Unfortunately, the joy is short-lived: an angry sheriff and his deputies come and take the boy's father away to jail for stealing a hog. Sounder, shot in the fracas, disappears.Angry and humiliated, the boy has no choice but to begin a difficult transition to adulthood. He learns to read, and with that skill comes the beginning of greater understanding. Sounder eventually returns - emaciated, battered, but still devoted - and so does the boy's hope. Though nothing can change the hard realities of the past, he gradually finds the courage he needs to rely on his own resources and
