During the two days of the novel's present-time narrative, Margaret receives an unexpected phone call at the Juvenile Court where she works in Waycross, Georgia, and is faced with a tormenting decision, one that forces her to confront all the old griefs of her conflicted life.

Margaret examines - with perplexity and wonder - the vast and rich array of her memories: of her young girlhood, growing up in the white slums of Jacksonville with three retarded siblings, a slow-witted mother, and a beloved father who ultimately betrays her; of her removal from the squalor of Eighth Street by her wealthy maternal grandmother, who brings her at age twelve to the orderly and beautiful dairy farm she runs in Waycross.