After declining a loan from a white landowner which he knows he can't pay back, Brownfield begins to head North on foot to follow in his father's footsteps.

Brownfield takes a liking to Mem and eventually marries her under the disapproving Josie's nose.

Brownfield beats and eventually kills Meme (sometimes printed as "Mem") and is jailed for an arbitrary seven years.

Grange finds the North unfulfilling and returns to Baker County, which is the only place he knows of as home.

She further states that the incident in the novel involving the murder of a woman and mother by her husband and the father of her children is based on a real case in her hometown of Eatonton, Georgia.