A young woman inherits her murdered sister’s troubled twins. Their arrival changes everything, cracking open her solitary life in difficult, hopeful and dangerous ways. 

Wounded Confederate soldier Inman's trek across the disintegrating South brings him into converse with slaves and marauders, bounty hunters and witches, both helpful and malign. At the same time, Ada, the woman he loved years before and is trying to reach, is desperate to revive her father's derelict farm and learn to survive in a world where old certainties have been swept away.