Publisher's Synopsis
Henry McAllan moves his city-bred wife, Laura, to a cotton farm in the Mississippi Delta in 1946. In a frightening and foreign place, Laura struggles to raise their two children in an isolated shack watched over by her hateful, racist father-in law. When it rains, the waters rise and swallow the bridge to town, stranding the family in a sea of mud. As the Second World War ends, two young men return home to help work the farm. Jamie McAllan, unlike his older brother, is charming and sensitive to Laura's plight. Ronsel Jackson, eldest son of the black sharecroppers who live on the McAllan farm, returns home a war hero, only to face more personal - and dangerous - battles against the bigotry of his own countrymen.
