It started in church. She should have been listening to the minister. Instead, a precocious fifth-grade schoolgirl saw something that caused her to believe a social, economic, and political chasm existed in her small town.
Julie Spencer set out to demonstrate the hidden relationship between status and churchgoing. When she interviewed classmates, adults, and presented her findings in an assigned school theme, word leaked of her divisive conclusions. Her investigation had challenged the community's 'secret that could have no name.'
Powerful people, whose pecuniary interests required the town to keep up its pretense of concord, threatened the girl, her teacher, and her parents.
Enter a whistleblower and a reporter ...