Accompanying his grandfather's body on the train ride to its final resting place, young Nathan Longford meets his enigmatic and eccentric cousin Aubrey, an encounter that is to haunt Nathan throughtout his lifetime.

"Lucy Kilgore has her bags packed for her escape from her rural Tennessee upbringing, but a drunken mistake forever tethers her to the town and one of its least-admired residents, Jeptha Taylor, who becomes the father of her child. Together, these two young people work to form a family, though neither has any idea how to accomplish that, and the odds are against them in a place with little to offer other than bluegrass music, tobacco fields, and a...