Julia is a sixteen year old caucasian girl moving with her fundamentally religious family into rural Indiana in the 1980's.
The small community claims to be righteous a "Jesus Land," while all along it is rife with prejudice, bigotry, alcohol and sexual
abuse. Julia's brutal father is a surgeon who leaves the daily upbringing of his children to Julia's mother, a distant, hypocritical woman who adopts black children for the sole purpose of the impression she is creating to the congregation of their church. However, should any of the adopted sons misbehave, the father makes sure they are beaten and locked into the basement.
Julia and her younger brother David, who besides being black in this new all white christian community, is frail and quiet, have a close bond and friendship. They make do the best they can, despite constant jeers and threats. With time they each make friends and hope to gain some normalcy between their school and home lives. As time passes, the violence of the father escalates, and Jerome, the older adopted black boy, gets beaten and runs away. He comes back though, into Julia's room at night where he rapes her. Not too long after, the parents decide that David is getting out of hand and send him away to a reform school so he could contemplate upon his sinful nature and repent of his sins. Julia soon follows him to the Dominican Republic, to a school resembling a boot camp, where they are both stripped of human dignity. Yet Julia, unlike David, remains resilient no matter what comes her way. Despite the disturbing, devastating and inconceivable pain and humility she encounters, she comes out a survivor. No anger and no bitterness will rule her life and take away from the victory of what she has overcome.