Like America in the mid-nineteenth century, Emma Garnet Tate Lowell is at war with herself. Born to privilege on a grand plantation she grows up more and more aware that her family's prosperity is inextricably linked to the institution of slavery. As she looks back on her troubled childhood, her attempt to create the ideal happy home through marriage, and the war that destroyed the rhythm of all their days, so she begins the long journey towards her own reconstruction.