"You stay in your hometown, you end up more of a stranger than if you'd started new someplace else." The struggle between the indigenous rural working class and the upper crust intensifies in this latest novel of Hebert's Darby series as Freddy Elman, son of the town trash collector, and Lilith Salmon, daughter of a prestigious family, embark on their ill-fated love affair. Seeing Darby through new eyes, Freddy comes to realize that "the kind of people who hunkered down among these tree-infested, rock-strewn hills" is "dying out, replaced by people with money, education, culture, people 'wise in the ways of the world'." As that world increasingly intervenes, the lovers' attempt to bridge the chasm that divides their class-alienated families inevitably collapses.