A primer on life in the South during the Farm Crisis and the Great Depression as one boy searches among his brother's death and the murder of a neighbor for what is real and what is true. David Sasq is reared in the Gospel Truth Baptist Church in Ty Ty, Georgia, and tries to reconcile what he learns there with what he sees around himself: Klan murders, a racial divide, hypocrisy, and an entirely different message from his grandfather, preacher at "the biggest Baptist church in Athens, with his own radio program."