When a fight between a black and white high school student turns into a race riot and spreads across town, Campbell, a white boy, and Lena, a black boy, barely-known classmates, flee the school and travel across town together to meet the Lena's boyfriend. These anxious hours are an opportunity for them to get to know each other and to overcome their prejudices.

"The authors remarkably evoke the inescapable spiral of violence, terror and helplessness, and the very current theme of racial discrimination in American society. This novel, by its subject, its ease of reading, its brevity, its breathless rhythm, will be able to please young people with reading difficulties." Young Reader