A Heart Divided by Cherie Bennett and Jeff Gottesfeld

When her parents decide to move from New Jersey to Tennessee, 16-year-old Kate is bitterly unhappy about giving up her friends and her spot in a prestigious playwriting workshop. Racial tensions abound in Redford and Kate learns quickly that she is a very northern girl in the middle of a very southern town. She decides to write a play about the town's act of flying the Confederate flag and the opposition that it causes. When she meets Jack Redford, a Romeo-and-Juliet-type romance begins. Kate joins the students trying to get their school's team name changed from the Rebels and the Confederate flag taken down, and Jack struggles to explain to his mother that he does not want to attend the Citadel, even though it is a family tradition.

One of the best books that I have read recently. The cultural aspects, the drama, are all very powerful and thought provoking