Emma Garnet Tate, the daughter of a rich plantation owner on the James River in Virginia, is the narrator of Kay Gibbons¹s extraordinary sixth novel, a journey into the past and into the heart of a woman. Although she lives a pampered life, wrapped in the love of her gentle mother and cared for by the warm and feisty servant Clarice, she must bear the crude dictates of her father, a self-made man who has acquired the trappings of wealth but remains marked by his humble origins and the dark secrets of his own childhood. Emma Garnet refuses to conform to the ideal of Southern womanhood, reading books supposedly not fit for a girl, disturbed by the "peculiar institution" of slavery, indifferent to developing the charms and wiles to attract a well-born Southern husband. When she marries Quincy Lowell, a doctor and the scion of a famous Northern family, her father ceases to communicate with her.

Accompanied by Clarice, she and Quincy settle in Raleigh, where their comfortable life is soon swept aside by the advent of the Civil War. Through the long years of strife, Emma Garnet nurses horribly wounded young men and watches as the ways of the Old South shatter around her. The war reaches deep into her life; when the conflict ends, both Quincy and Clarice succumb to its destructive powers. With her three daughters, Emma Garnet begins life anew in her husband¹s hometown of Boston. For her, however, there is only one true home, and she returns to Raleigh to help build a new South, in which all people are treated with respect and humanity. On the occasion of her last afternoon, exploring the poignant, horrific, and joyful events of more than fifty years, she faces death with equanimity, proud of her accomplishments, and at peace with herself.