IN THE EARLY SUMMER of 1933, an 18-year-old naive Kentucky farm boy, Michael Boone, becomes a driver for a traveling religious revival troupe. As the summer unfolds and the itinerant group moves from town to town, he learns that things are not what they seem; primarily that the goal of the enterprise is making money, not saving souls and that hardly anyone in the group fits into a neat and normal family narrative. Michael, in turns, is exposed to religious hypocrisy, the world of good literature, the destructiveness of alcohol abuse, pedophilia, overt racism, first true loves, near tragedy and selflessness. He is also skillfully tutored in the art of seduction and sex. The full impact of Michael's time with Brother Daniel's Good News Revival is only learned many years after the summer of '33. It is a revelation that shakes the foundation of the life he had since built.