It is the Fourth of July 2019, and the Mason family is gathering for its annual celebration at the family's historic Chesapeake farm, Mason's Retreat. It isn't everyone's favorite tradition, but Harry Mason has once again goaded his wife, Kate, and their children into participating. Their oldest, Rosalie, is having trouble with her marriage; the youngest, Ethan, is in the throes of a fitful first relationship. In between, Eleanor despairs over her stalled novel, a fictionalized memoir of the wife of the first Mason immigrant who landed in 1659.

Kate, recovering from a second round of chemotherapy, is at the center of this ritual of remembrance. Tart and candid, she asks her husband, "What crimes against humanity did your family not commit on this farm?" And so it happens that when the family, joined by a cast of neighbors and cousins from France, sits down for dinner, the question of how they should regard their past comes to the fore.

Told with warmth and humor, On the Tobacco Coast is Christopher Tilghman's concluding meditation on the themes of his novels about Mason's Retreat: place and history, the persistence of family stories, race and white privilege, the enigmas and customs of regions. It is a reflection on the state of America today, its battles with its own history, and efforts to reckon with the wrongs of the past while looking forward to a more just future.