With remarkable insight and sensitivity, French constructs his drama around a richly drawn portrayal of a nineteen-year-old poor white girl, Holly R. Hill, who lives with her family in Supply, North Carolina, in 1944. When we meet her, Holly spends her days fussing about her clothes; worrying about her brother and her sometime fiance, who are off fighting in the war; contemplating kissing the local dreamboat, Garet Foster; and sharing secrets with her best friend, Elsie Fagen.

Like a character from a Thomas Hardy novel, Holly seems, literally, perfectly ordinary. But Holly's safe world begins to crack open as her town and family struggle to cope with the war's toll on their loved ones. In her mourning, Holly begins to spend a lot of time alone near the Back Land, "where Supply's coloreds lived," and where she meets Elias Owens, a young, handsome veteran who is an aspiring painter and composer, and who is black.

Their relationship touches off a maelstrom that leaves no doubt as to the consequences of crossing society's proscribed boundaries. A love story and an indictment, Holly is also a story of friendship, of community and of the aftereffects of a war on a family as well as on a small town. Told with a piercing tenderness and intensity, Holly confirms Albert French as a dark and passionate chronicler of American mores and culture.