Onesie Delilah is Lilah McAfees story, from her birth in 1926 in an Alabama mill town through three-quarters of a century, against the backdrop of family and community expectations in a Southland undergoing dramatic social and economic changes. Throughout her life, Lilah yearns for a loving relationship with her beautiful and selfish mother, but their fragile bonds are shattered when in the 1950s Lilah has a romantic encounter with a black man. Her actions precipitate murder, and she must deal with her sense of involvement and her suspicions regarding the killers identity, as well as with widening rifts within her family. The events of her life take her through three marriages, from poverty to wealth, from loss and loneliness to strength and self-fulfillment. Dubbed Onesie by the Negro midwife, Lilah lives up to this recognition of her birth order and prediction of predominance, for she is resoundingly a survivor.