The novel, told from a third-person perspective, is set in the early 1930s. Ty Ty Walden is a widower who owns a small farm in Georgia, just across the border from South Carolina. His daughter, Rosamund, is married to Will Thompson, a worker in a cotton textile mill. Another daughter, whom everyone in the novel refers to as Darling Jill, is unmarried. His son, Buck Walden, is married to the beautiful Griselda. Buck and Griselda live on the farm with Ty Ty and Ty Ty's other (unmarried) son, Shaw. Pluto Swint, an obese and lazy local farmer, sexually desires and wants to marry Darling Jill, who constantly humiliates him.