The novel is set in Florida during Jim Crow, focusing on the wrongful imprisonment and abuse of young Black boys. Antiblack violence, including sexual violence, is a central theme. In the backstory, a Black man was falsely accused of raping a white woman. Most people are aware she's lying to cover up her own husband's abuse of her, but due to the impossibility of a fair trial, the man was forced to flee the state. A Black teenaged girl is regularly sexually harassed by a white boy. At one point she is forced to go to him for help when her brother is wrongfully imprisoned. He demands a kiss in exchange for his help, and when she complies, he attempts to take it further by forcefully grabbing her and pushing her against a wall. She fights him off. An adult white man who runs a "reformatory school" (functionally a prison) for Black and lower-class white boys has raped and molested several of the boys under his authority, keeping photographs of them in his desk. When he first arrives at the reformatory, a 12-year-old Black boy is forced to strip and expose himself to the head of the school (ostensibly to prove he hasn't smuggled anything in). A police officer is mentioned to have raped several people (implicitly all or mostly Black people).