[1] It concerns a woman named Laurel, who travels to New Orleans to take care of her father, Judge McKelva, after he has surgery for a detached retina.

Judge McKelva fails to recover from this surgery, and as he dies slowly in the hospital, Laurel visits and reads to him from Dickens.

Laurel and Fay are thrown together when they return the Judge to his hometown, Mount Salus, Mississippi, where he will be buried.

[2] Laurel Hand, the main character, travels to New Orleans from her home in Chicago to assist her aging father as a family friend and doctor operates on his eye.

To the distress of all who knew him, the judge dies after his wife throws a violently emotional fit in the hospital and confesses to cheating and interest in his money.

The two women travel back to the judge's home in Mount Salus, Mississippi for the funeral and are received by close friends of the family.

After her distraught and immature stepmother leaves, Laurel finally has time to herself in the house where she was raised, with the friends and neighbors she knew since childhood.

During the few days she remains, Laurel digs through the past as she goes through the house, remembering her deceased parents and the life she had before she left Mount Salus.

Judge McKelva met her at the Southern Bar Association at the old Gulf Coast hotel where Fay had a part-time job at the time.

Ten years after the death of his wife, Becky, he marries a younger woman that he met at a Southern Bar Association conference named Wanda Fay.

After the Judge passes, the majority of the novel is set in Laurel's childhood home, in her father's hometown of Mount Salus, Mississippi.

Her mother, Becky McKelva slowly loses her vision as she approaches her death, and her father dies while attempting to recover from surgery for a detached retina.