It is 1976 and Andy Catlett, farmer and agricultural journalist, alone in San Francisco, is walking the streets at dawn. In the eight months since losing his right hand to a corn-picking machine, he has lost his sense of place. The abrasiveness of the city and Andy's critical view of his disfigured body enhance his acute awareness of the moral disfigurement around him. Two thousand miles from his home in Kentucky, he begins to remember: people, places and the comfort of knowing the land intimately.