A simple Southern girl is thrown into adulthood when she marries a Civil War veteran haunted by nightmares of the war. Years later she looks back on the events of a life filled with drama, pain, joy, hardship and triumph.

Gracie and her sister and brothers, each the product of a different dead-beat dad, have been dragged through life by their drug-addled mother. At the age of seventeen, Gracie decides to get a job, succeed in school, and be the mother her siblings never had.

The tale of an 18th-century physician who takes eight years to travel through a variety of fantastical lands, only to have everyone but his wife take him for a madman when he returns home.