"Curing time is tobacco's season of harvest, a time of transformation when the leaf is made golden by subjection to fire and heat. Tobacco farmer Hume Rankin endures his own curing time in the summer of 1959. When the rains won't come and the crops wilt in the field, he solicits the magic of an old, blind black woman. She warns about the dangers of calling on the middle world ... Hume dismisses her warning, to his peril. When his life-long nemesis, who's always had his eye on Hume's land as well as his wife, is found dead, all eyes are on Hume"--Page 4 of cover.