Broke and despondent, trickster Durksen Hurst returns to Mississippi seeking redemption for his disreputable past — and maybe some glory. When he encounters a dozen hungry slaves hiding in the wilds, he persuades them to build a plantation with him — a scheme that will threaten the town’s dominant family: the brilliant, mad Widow French and her tortured son, Devereau. When Antoinette DuVallier, a mysterious woman from New Orleans with unknown ties to the Frenches, arrives desperately seeking her missing boy, long-buried secrets are exposed that tear asunder the once-sleepy hamlet. As the tangled webs of deceit unravel, each startling revelation shines a fresh light on what it means to be a man or a woman, free or enslaved — indeed, on what it means to be human.