Leland Standard left Eunola, Mississippi, as soon as she could, pursuing dreams of dancing, cities, a wider world. Now, thirty-five years later, she's coming home - bringing with her a son, Toby, who's older now than she was when she left, as well as an ailment that might change her life all over again.

Over the course of a long afternoon and an even longer dinner party, Leland and Toby journey into the lives of those who meet to greet her: the host couple, their daughter a suicide and their adopted son about as avant-garde as it gets in the Delta. A woman who escaped her suffocating family only to return to preside over its ruination. Her (married) boyfriend, whose lawful wife is present at table and a well of desperation and bitterness to boot.

A singer whose music alone releases her soul from the failing prospects she shares with her husband, a decent man who has chosen, as always, to stay at home. An ex-football star at Mississippi State who is doubly in love and putting on weight. Then, for Leland, there is the mysterious stranger who somehow seems almost the most familiar member of this now-alien community.

1. What Leland and Toby discover is a world in all its conflicted glory - sorrowful, hilarious, passionate, all at once - and full of memories both shared and concealed. Beverly Lowry's portrait of this eccentric cast of humanity brings forth with searing insight the particular rhythms of Southern life, and of desires gone astray.