Sara and Jeffrey have finally started to click again when a phone call from the woman he was unfaithful with brings their affair back into sharp relief.

The search for her identity leads Jeffrey and Lena to an organic soybean farming cooperative out in the sticks owned by a large, tightly knit, religious family, led by the charismatic oldest son.

They import their labor force from the people that populate Atlanta's shelters and halfway houses, facilitated through the family church's outreach program.

At one time or another the case involves strippers, the one-legged, one-eyed lawyer extraordinaire Buddy Conford, an abused woman Lena both identifies with and wants to save, and a search to find more buried coffins before it's too late.

At the novel's conclusion, Sara finally agrees to remarry Jeffrey after at least four proposals, and Ethan pushes Lena so far that she decides it's time to escape.