Set in the hills of southern Missouri, a family's private dilemma is made public when, after fifteen years of estrangement, a son learns that his father has been falsely accused of abandoning both him and his incapacitated mother following divorce. Raised to loathe the man who left them, Cody is stunned to hear his mother admit that it was she who instigated the divorce, she who had asked that his father leave his home and everything he loved behind. Cecily had her reasons. Valid ones, or so the bed-bound woman believes until Cody's hatred is suddenly directed at her. Hurt by what he views as a betrayal, shocked by her duplicity, Cody reluctantly turns to his father for the truth.