Ten-year-old Grace is in search of a subject for her fifth-grade history project when she learns that her great-great-great-great-grandfather stabbed his lover to death.
His grisly act was memorialized in a murder ballad, her aunt tells her, so it must have happened. But the lessons of that revelation - to be careful of men and desire - are not just Grace 's to learn. Her family 's tangled past is part of a dark legacy in which the lives of generations of women are affected by the violence immortalized in folksongs like "Knoxville Girl" and "Pretty Polly," reminding them always to know their place - or risk the wages of sin.
The New School admits students of any race, color, national and ethnic origin to all the rights, privileges, programs, and activities generally accorded or made available to students at the school. It does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national and ethnic origin in administration of its educational policies, admissions policies, scholarship and loan programs, and athletic and other school-administered programs.