The lives of four characters, including cemetery thief Cade Curtis, a runaway slave, and an illegally captured ocelot, flow together across time through their connections to the Houston bayou and an angel carved from Georgia marble.

One of the WPA's great successes, the Pack Horse Library Project of Eastern Kentucky provided books to those in remote locations. It's 4:30 in the morning, and the "book woman" and her horse are already on their way. Hers is an important job, for the folks along her treacherous route are eager for the tattered books and magazines she carries in her saddlebags. During the Great Depression, thousands lived on the brink of starvation. Many perished....