Hearing her mother has fallen and lost her mind, Prentiss Clay, a California lawyer, hurries home to the fictional town of Buford, Mississippi. This may be her last chance to be forgiven for her father's death, and perhaps to find the baby she gave up thirty years before. She finds her prickly older sister Vaiden fully in charge, while upstairs, Augusta Clay, widow of the town's beloved Episcopal priest, lies under her crocheted bedspread, receiving visitors like a dowager queen, and with seemingly no memory of either of her daughters. During the eleven days of the novel, along with her own misjudgments, a fire, and a brief disastrous tryst, Prentiss uncovers the cruel, three-decade deception that has shaped her life. She must do the forgiving.