North Carolina, 1960. After losing her parents, fifteen-year-old Ivy Hart is left to care for her grandmother, older sister and young nephew as tenants on a small tobacco farm. As she struggles with her grandmother's aging, her sister's mental illness, and her own epilepsy, Ivy realizes they might need more than she can give... When Jane Forrester takes a position as Grace County's newest social worker, she doesn't realize just how much her help is...

Ab Snopes is a Southern tenant farmer whose unrelenting and violent nature proves to be his undoing. Snopes sets his employer's barn on fire when he thinks he's been treated unfairly. His son, Sarty, is horrified. Snopes escapes justice for lack of proof, but he and his family are told to move on. No sooner do they move than Snopes is offended by his new rich employer. Torn between trying to win his father's acceptance and his aversion to what...