Lionel Elijah Buckner Jr. is comfortable if not completely satisfied with a life consumed by unapologetic self-indulgence. But then out of the blue, he receives a call which ever so subtly alters his path. And despite his best initial efforts to keep himself isolated from the stagnant Mississippi muck of his past, a succession of inexplicable coincidences eventually entangle him the lives of the narrow-minded simpletons he'd thought he'd left behind. Along the way, he is reacquainted with a father he never really knew on his improbable journey back home.