As Wayland, a successful Florida businessman and devoted family man, drives through the territory of his hardscrabble childhood--"Depression-era Virginia--"his memories tumble forth in contrast to the images he has worked so hard to invent and maintain during his adult life. He finds himself haunted by those he believed forgotten: his mother--"a proud, upright woman worn thin and tough by poverty and ceaseless toil; his father--"who taught his boys self-reliance but died broken and unable to provide for his own; and the Ballards--"wealthy landowners who were the gods of their own pastoral heaven, prospering from the sweat of others. Looking back over the land he left behind and the betrayed promises of his youth, Wayland must decide how much of his former life to reveal to his cultured young wife and beautiful daughter, who know nothing of hunger and want, and how much to keep buried under the dust of his past, hidden by lies.