Set in Petal, Mississippi, a small town at the close of the 1950s, this novel tells the story of the 28-year-old Even Grade, a black man who grew up an orphan, and Valuable Korner, a 15-year-old white girl, who is the daughter of the town prostitute and an unknown father. They are both separately seeking the family, love, and affection they had not had before, until their paths cross owing to their common acquaintance of loner mystic Joody Two Sun.