The first is of James Ashton and his editor Jordan Hamilton working on their third project. As work begins they rekindle their longstanding affair, causing myriad complications for Jordan, his wife and their teenage sons. Other relationships in their lives come into play, those who support them and those who seek to destroy them. The second story line involves the stories once told, excerpts of the chronicles of Miss Betty, born to a tenant farmer in Arkansas who rose to become the wealthiest woman in Winaper MS. Her daughter Lucy Ann who with the child James on her lap relays the stories of the women in their family including his mother April May, their adventures and misadventures and the men who inhabited their lives.