When Moline Bedwell fled the small town of Resurrection, Missouri, at the age of sixteen, she vowed she would never go back. Now, twenty years later, she returns for what promises to be a short trip to clear up family business.

Yet she soon finds herself confronting both the past and the future as she falls in love with Dayrell Bell, the wild hillbilly boy she abandoned all those years ago, while also taking on the Heart Hog Corporation, which is determined to bring prosperity to this dying town by establishing a pork-raising operation in its midst, at the expense of the area's small farmers - including Moline's aunt Walker and uncle Able.

Peopled by such wonderful characters as Titus Bedwell, the wise but bitter African-American preacher from the other side of town; Aunt Walker, whose eighty-year-old wit is still sharp as a tack; Lukey, a waiflike woman from the Ozark Hills whose friendship is both magical and haunting; and Dear Pearl, Moline's haughty but terribly lonely cousin, South of Resurrection also reflects on history.

It is the history of the Bedwell family, caught between its middle-class aspirations and its hillbilly roots, and that of the state of Missouri, whose identity remains as divided as it was during the Civil War. As the ghosts of the past converge in the present, Moline must overcome her ambivalence to create a new life rooted in the old. Hers is a love story, a family's tale, and most of all a lesson - that we can go home again.