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Frank Money, a traumatized Black veteran of the Korean War, escapes confinement after receiving word that his younger sister Cee is gravely ill. Traveling through the segregated United States of the 1950s, he makes his way to Georgia and learns that a white doctor has used Cee in dangerous reproductive experiments. Frank rescues her, and the women of their hometown, Lotus, nurse her back to health while teaching her to value her own judgment. Frank also confronts a memory he has suppressed: he killed a hungry Korean child during the war. At the close, the siblings return to the site of a clandestine burial they witnessed as children. They rebury the man's bones beneath a bay tree and mark the grave with words affirming that a man lies there. Cee emerges physically scarred but self-possessed, while Frank begins to make an honest peace with his past and with the place he once hated.

Frank Money remembers a disturbing childhood sight: he and his sister hid in grass while men buried a Black body, after the children had watched two horses fighting nearby. Years later, after service in Korea, Frank is held in a Seattle mental hospital. A letter warning that his sister is near death cuts through his disorientation. He escapes without shoes or proper clothes and reaches Reverend John Locke, who gives him food, a suit, travel money, and the name of a helpful minister farther east. Frank's thoughts establish both his fierce attachment to Cee and the burden of wartime memories he cannot control. His former girlfriend Lily has tried to build a stable life with him, but his grief, drinking, and recurring absences made their relationship untenable. He boards a train to begin the long trip toward Georgia.

Frank travels across a country where racial violence shapes every practical choice. After being robbed and beaten, he receives help from people connected through churches and informal networks. In Chicago, Billy Watson shelters him and Frank witnesses the sudden shooting of a Black boy by police, another reminder that returning from war offers no protection at home. In Atlanta, Cee works for Dr. Beauregard Scott, a white physician interested in eugenics and experimental reproductive medicine. His housekeeper Sarah senses the danger in his treatment of Cee and has sent the message summoning Frank. Cee, still carrying the effects of a loveless childhood and an abandoning husband, takes the doctor's approval as proof that she has finally found useful, respectable work.

Cee's history explains her vulnerability. Born on the road after her family was expelled from Texas, she grew up under Lenore's contempt in Lotus and depended on Frank for protection. As a teenager she married Prince, who renamed her Cee, then left with their car. She is therefore slow to question Dr. Scott's authority, even as Sarah tries to warn her about his books and private procedures. Frank continues south, moving between present dangers and memories of Korea. He recalls his friends Mike and Stuff, their deaths, and a Korean girl scavenging near the soldiers, but his account of what happened to her remains incomplete. By the time Frank reaches Atlanta, Cee has been made critically ill by the doctor's experiments.

Frank enters Dr. Scott's house, takes the unconscious Cee away, and brings her back to Lotus. The local women, led by Ethel Fordham, refuse to surrender her to the medical system that injured her. Through sustained care they stop the bleeding and slowly restore her strength. They also insist that recovery requires more than Frank's protection: Cee must learn that she is not the worthless, dependent person Lenore and Prince taught her to believe she was. Frank waits apart while the women work and begins to reconsider Lotus, noticing the communal knowledge and endurance he had dismissed when he left. Cee survives, but she is told that the damage to her womb is permanent. She responds by learning to sew and quilt, earning money, and making decisions for herself.

Cee's recovery changes the balance between the siblings. Grateful to Frank but no longer willing to be treated as a child, she asserts an identity independent of him. Frank finally corrects the story he has told about Korea: he himself shot the hungry Korean girl, and his shame over that act has been entangled with his grief for Mike and Stuff. He and Cee return to the field from their childhood memory. The dead man they saw buried had been forced into a brutal fight staged for white men and then hidden without a proper grave. The siblings recover his bones, wrap them in the quilt Cee made, and bury him again beneath the bay tree. Their marker identifies the forgotten victim as a man. The act does not undo war, racism, or Cee's injury, but it gives the dead dignity and allows Frank and Cee to claim a different relationship to Lotus: the town becomes a home they have remade through truth and care.

The women of Lotus save Cee's life, but the damage caused by Dr. Scott's experiments leaves her unable to bear children. Under Ethel Fordham's care, Cee learns practical skills and a new confidence, and she refuses to let Frank resume treating her as helpless. Frank, meanwhile, finally faces the memory he has concealed even from himself: in Korea, he—not a fellow soldier—killed the hungry Korean girl who approached the camp. Brother and sister return to the place where, as children, they witnessed a Black man's secret burial after a lethal fight arranged for white spectators. They dig up his bones, wrap them in the quilt Cee has made, and rebury him beneath a bay tree with a marker declaring his humanity. By honoring the forgotten dead, Frank and Cee also reclaim Lotus as a home they can choose rather than merely the site of childhood suffering. Their wounds are not erased, but both end with greater truth, dignity, and independence.