Turn-of-the-century East Texas. A world that offers no home for Reuben Sweetbitter, a young half-Choctaw, half-white man. Left as a child to fend for himself after the death of his mother, he finds his uneasy way through the world, searching always for a place to belong. He has lost contact with his Choctaw heritage and yet can belong neither to the white world nor that of the blacks who give him shelter.

He finds his way to the town of Three Rivers, where he falls in love with Martha Clarke, the young, headstrong daughter of a local lawyer. Their forbidden love is tested when they are forced to flee amid an explosive lynching climate.