On the tenth of September 1923 little motherless Laura McRaven travels from Jackson, Mississippi, on a train named the Yellow Dog. She is returning to Shellmound, the family plantation at the heart of the delta. There she is swept into the arms of the Fairchilds, her huge collection of entrancing relatives. They have gathered for the marriage of seventeen-year-old Dabney - the prettiest of the Fairchild girls - to a man from the mountains: the overseer Troy Flavin. The ordinary events in the life of this clannish, proud, loving and quarrelling family are wonderfully portrayed as Dabney's great day draws nearer...