Annie's Angel — Jim Lawrence

Uptown Chicago in November, 1963 is a brutal place for the James Allen McCrees of Letcher County, Kentucky. After migrating from the depleted coal fields in search of a better life, father, mother and three children have struggled for two years to make ends meet in a run-down area known derisively as Hillbilly Land, finding solace only in the songs of their Southern mountain heritage.

Now, however, as James Allens illness worsens, his wife, Mavis June, must take more and more on herself if the family is to survive.

These are the desperate circumstances in which 14-year-old Annie Mae McCree is forced to grow up and to complete her journey from girlhood to womanhood.

When her mother passes on to her a folk belief in a guardian angel, Annie dares to hope that she and her family will be under his protection. However, one shattering personal tragedy after another fractures that innocent faith and forces her on a painful spiritual quest of her own.

Along the way, she learns much about who she is, experiences the power of first love, and finds out a thing or two about angels -- most importantly, that they often arent who or what you expect them to be, and most of the time, they rarely look like angels at all.