On a moonlit night in the summer of 1917 in a rural southwest Georgia town, a twelve-year-old Negro boy hears the senator s wife cry for help. He fights her attacker and saves her life. From that point forward he enjoys limitless favors from the couple. Soon he is a harmonica-playing, juke-jointing, moonshining gambler, whose hot temper gets him into one fight after another. According to one prominent person in his life, he is on an unalterable course to the grave. He tunes out all the unsolicited advice he receives about dropping his bad habits. That is until the cold winds of trying...