Logical, serious-minded Keturah Hollis has been a slave all her life. When her brother Sly Hollis deposits her in Arrow Creek, Oklahoma, a town run by Negroes, Keturah has to learn for the first time ever what it is to be free.

Irreverent and cynical, Manny Day, a runaway slave from a tobacco plantation in Kentucky, has a pretty good life in Arrow Creek. No longer at the whims of other men, he runs a general store with his brother, taking each day as they come. He lives a quiet, mostly content life—until he stumbles across a dead body.

Both filled with a desire to protect Arrow Creek, Keturah is reluctantly pulled into a profession she never would have considered while Manny is reluctantly forced to solve a mystery he hoped to avoid. Unlikely friends and even unlikelier allies, Keturah and Manny must work together and learn to have some faith.