Travis Boyette, recently paroled and suffering from an inoperable brain tumor, resolves to confess that he committed a murder nine years earlier for which another man was convicted and awaits execution, but finds it difficult to convince lawyers and judges of their error.

Set in the mountains of western North Carolina, an historical novel follows the lives of three families from the end of the Civil War until 1928, when the National Park Service prepares to uproot them to make way for the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.