Seeking a future, the Carter families move from their bootlegging home in the mountains to middle Georgia. By 1946, they expand their enterprises to include murder, bootlegging, cattle rustling, election fraud, and interracial affairs. Revenge for attempted rape is best served up by two women: "-they'll git in his hay. Atter they git paid, you and me, we'll git him back. We'll light a Lucifer to his hay barn. That'll learn him." Filled with loneliness and hunger for love, Penny, at fourteen, uses her sexuality to satiate the hungers and generates problems for herself and her family. The men reach for the top rail, unmindful of what or whom they step on-neighbors, benefactors or strangers. THE BOTTOM RAIL's characters are as decadent as Faulkner's Snopes family and as driven as Flannery O'Connor's.