Although the family's difficulties increase when the father is imprisoned for stealing a ham from work, the boy still hungers for an education.

The author notes prisoners were hauled in "mule-drawn wagons", and the mention of chain gangs places an upper limit to the story of 1955 when the practice ended.

The family subsists on fried corn mush, biscuits, and milk gravy until one morning they wake up to the smell of boiling ham.

They feast for three days, but finally the sheriff and two of his deputies burst into the cabin and arrest the father for stealing the ham.

About two months after the father's arrest, the boy awakes to the sound of faint whining, goes outside, and finds Sounder standing there.

During the late fall and winter months over a period of several years, he journeys within and among counties, looking for working convicts, seeking word of his father.

One day he is leaning against a fence, watching a group of convicts at a road camp, trying to make out his father's form, when a guard whacks the boy on the fingers with a piece of iron and tells him to leave.

Before leaving to return to school, the boy tells his mother that Sounder will be dead before he can come back for the holiday.

Despite their deaths, there is a sense of peace and resolution over the family - especially for the boy, who has achieved the thing he most wanted - to learn to read.

In 2003, ABC's Wonderful World of Disney aired a new film adaptation, reuniting two actors from the original.