At the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains sits the small farm towns of Rockwell, Sugar Loaf, and Liledoun, North Carolina. A large family struggles to survive the chaotic nature of the family head: their mother, a terrifying blend of rage, disappointment, and religious command. Her husband follows sheepishly behind, a monster of his own kind.

And then there's young Jesse: unwanted from conception, but kept as a pawn for her mother's bidding. Her life is a tale of growing up with no one to count on but herself.

A story of southern hills, a mother's neglect, fireflies, kidnapping, birth, death, and the taste of sweet mulberries ripened by the sun. Jesse is a girl, hidden, who becomes a woman, discovered.