A nurse is told not to touch a baby because the parents don’t want a black nurse touching their white child. But then, that same baby goes into cardiac distress and the nurse they didn’t want is the only one around. Small Great Things explores why holding onto one way of life is so dangerous to those around us, and how we can grow to become more than that.

Plot twist: The author, John Howard Griffin, isn’t black. He changes his outward appearance through tanning lamps and medication in order to blend into the black community. Taking place in the deep south in 1959, you’d be surprised at what’s changed today—and what hasn’t.