The First Year It Sleeps is a coming-of-age novel set in the 1950's near McGuire Veterans Hospital in Chesterfield County, VA. The threat of polio forms the backdrop for the story of five young people who must avoid the August heat and plan their play in the somewhat cooler evenings. Kate, Charlie, Will, Sonny, and Bucky meet on Kate's front stoop after supper each evening to start their adventures with each one accepting a dare. Biking off to the abandoned Civil War era manor at the entrance to their neighborhood, they step past crumbling headstones in its eerie gated cemetery and peer through the windows of a cabin behind it. When they see a tall, muscular Negro sitting at a kitchen table, a book and a beer in front of him, they decide to make him the target of their games, naming him "Tramp" because to them what else could he be? One night, one of them doesn't make it back to the group. A racist police lieutenant and an overzealous night watchman search for the missing child, all along suspecting Tramp. The younger sister of one of the five, defying the racial segregation of the day, befriends a young black girl living in a former servant bungalow across from the manor. Inspired by the words of Rosa Parks - "You must never be fearful about what you are doing when it is right" - the two join forces and solve the mystery of the missing child.