When Eva Dennison learns that she has inherited the fallow sharecropping plantation in Mississippi that her parents fled to make a new life in L.A., she is eager to escape the big city and explore her historical roots. Eva abandons her dissertation about ancestral memory in African American literature and myth and takes with her Anastasia, her college-age daughter, and Charley, her investment broker cousin. Together, they plan to restore the old mansion and grounds and open a retreat and think-tank for activist women of the hard-hit Gulf region.

But the three women's arrival at Eva's decayed mansion lands them in tragedy and terror. Eva falls in love with the troubled man researching her family's supernatural folklore about how they freed themselves from slavery. Charley thinks she's being stalked by a murderer. And beautiful Anastasia becomes enchanted by a mysterious wanderer in the woods who watches and waits for the family fairy tales to come true.

Soon, Eva realizes that she must confront her family's mythical past before it destroys them all.