El protagonista de esta novela -cuya acción transcurre en el sur de Estados Unidos, en la época de reajuste subsiguiente a la Guerra de la Secesión- se encuentra en una de las situaciones más singulares en que puede verse un hombre: la pérdida de memoria a raíz de la campaña.

Paris Griffin, the young handsome owner of a large Southern plantation, is mentally disturbed by his experiences in the Civil War. He is especially traumatized from leading other men to their deaths. When he returns home, he has lost his memory and will to live. His brother hires a nurse who has a record of helping men in Paris' condition recover. The nurse, Candice Tower, is herself married to a physically handicapped man who is angry at her and the rest of the world for the condition in which he finds himself.

Candice and Paris fall in love but since she is married, neither of them will step over the line. Paris marries Laurel who dose not have a rigid moral code. She is having a affair with Dion Cadwallader who is an ignorant white racist and eventually a founding member of the Ku Klux Klan in that area.

Meanwhile, Paris must recognize that the reasons he went to war no longer are correct or moral and he assists his brother and Candice who is from Vermont in building schools to teach the young and old former slaves to read and write so they can make a living and rise up from the poverty they live in now. However they face the rise of the Klan and the corruption of the Reconstruction Era which left a cynical population of blacks and whites behind.

When the northerners left because they could see they did not have a chance of changing the attitudes or culture of the South, the Klan and the whites took back all the gains won by blacks following the War. At one point in the narrative, a character acknowledges that the South lost the battle but by being patient, they won the war. Blacks were again living much like slaves of the past and in very great fear of annoying a white person and being killed in a very nasty way.

Most of the education gains that were made by blacks and whites following the War, were lost after the racist society took over after Reconstruction. Paris at one point is struggling with the value of educating the black children and says, "I uphold the dubious proposition that it is desirable or even possible to educate black children, against men who, throughout history have educated nobody's children, not even their own." What an indictment of the pre and post Civil War American South this statement is. Considering the way education is funded in some southern states today, the attitude continues.

There is sort of happy conclusion to the story, but with all the killing of innocent people including women and children through racial hatred and just dreadful ignorance, there is little satisfaction attained. ( )