1945: a nation at war and a family in tatters. It’s springtime in the Jim Crow south, and young polio survivor Wyatt Bowman has been given a divine assignation, delivered through the voice of his deceased brother, to snap Byron Nelson’s famous PGA tournament winning streak. But when the local redneck judge attempts to frame an innocent black man for the rape of Wyatt’s adolescent cousin, the Bowman family, led by their obstinate, blind matriarch, “Boots,” decides to fight for justice. Meanwhile another crazy swamp rat cousin is roaming the bayous with a pet copperhead draped around his neck, and it’s only a matter of time before the truth is, at last, revealed. Chasing Byron is Southern literary gumbo, served up with an unlikely mix of ingredients: golf, the war in Japan, the fading aristocracy, racial injustice, a tree frog named FDR, Jr., and a young man grappling with an unfamiliar, disturbing bout of cosmic interference.