Plot summary

Spring 1935, Waxahachie, Texas. Edna Spalding, mother to young Frank and Possum Spalding, is ill-equipped, thus ill-prepared, to handle many of the family responsibilities following the accidental workplace death of her husband, the town's sheriff, Royce Spalding. Chief among these responsibilities is being the family breadwinner and managing the family finances--including making the next mortgage payment on their farm in October. Rather than heed the advice of the banker Albert Denby to sell the farm despite the depressed market, Edna will do whatever she must to keep herself and her kids in what they know as their home. On unsolicited advice from a Black stranger, beggar Moze Hadner, Edna decides to farm cotton--about which she knows nothing--to earn enough to make that mortgage payment. Despite something that Moze does against her, Edna hires him to be her sole farmhand. Also adding a small amount to the household finances is her new boarder, whom Mr. Denby actually foists off on her: his blind, loner brother-in-law Will, who otherwise would be institutionalized. As a collective they must contend with the depressed market, Mother Nature, racial tensions within the segregated community, and other issues, to get the crop to market to make that payment, with determination, love and support which may keep them going after a rough start between the Spaldings and the two new men in their lives. Meanwhile, the issue of spousal dependency touches not only Edna, but also her sister Margaret Lomax, who loves her husband Wayne but is unaware that he is having an affair with his friend Buddy Kelsey's schoolteacher wife Viola Kelsey.—Huggo