Within months of the disappearance of an Atlanta philanthropist's plane off the coast of Liberia, Dr. Andrew Barnes' wife announces that she is pregnant with their first child and he is offered the position of medical director for the philanthropist's charitable organization that is dedicated to improving the lives of African-Americans in the impoverished Mississippi Delta. Unlike most black residents of the Delta, who live their entire lives in poverty and despair, Andy Barnes is finishing a fellowship at Duke University after graduating from Harvard Medical School. Over the objections of his beautiful, sophisticated, New Orleans-born wife, he moves his young family back home to Mississippi where he is befriended by James Delaney, an elderly white farmer and member of the board of directors for the charity, and his wife Claire. Andy's fantasies of becoming a modern Albert Schweitzer serving his own people are shattered when he discovers a conspiracy that stretches from the dark cypress swamps and tupelo-gum brakes of the Delta to Washington, D.C. and threatens war in the Middle East.