Those lovelorn and weary travelers who find their way to the dead-end road otherwise known as Preacher's Lake come expecting to take a break from their hectic, hard-to-make-sense-of lives. There's Rita, a young single mother who arrives in town with few prospects beyond the $600 stashed in her suitcase and Rainey, her gentle 5-year-old daughter, whose brown skin causes a minor commotion among the old-timers who hold court on the porch of Buster's Hardware.

Carole, an artist, has come to Preacher's Lake to force herself out of mourning for a dead lover, assisted in that effort by an overzealous new one.

Those inhabitants of Preacher's Lake who have spent a lifetime among the twisted pines and tar-paper homes, never venturing more than a few miles down the near-deserted roads, are no more sure of their place in the world. Slim Riley is on his own and in love for the very first time at age forty. The object of his affection, Janesta Curtis, has grown rest less with the burden of unrealized dreams and impatient with her sometimes trying but thoroughly endearing daughter, Crystal.

Trudy and Hydie Hyde run the local diner which doubles as the unofficial town hall and is the place everyone comes to for the best jokes, the latest gossip, and a genuine sense of belonging. As the lives of these and a dozen other memorable characters cross and recross, the residents of Preacher's Lake knit themselves into a real community.