Family Plot

As World War I ends, Orin Dawes love, Dimple Deribus, lies dead in the hay loft of her fathers stable in Ramsfield, Illinois. Orin soon meets Ruby Somers, the daughter of nomadic tent preacher Rev. Jimmy. Rubys gift helps her ease Orins terminally ill mothers pain and read peoples sins. When Orins mother dies she is buried in the family plot at the edge of the farm. Orin marries Ruby and they start a family. Over the next twenty years the dairy herd multiplies, and fifteen children, named alphabetically from Adalia to Orinthal, Jr. provide hands to milk the cows. Orin, Ruby, and their childrens dark secrets of murder, arson, and worse sit mutely like ghosts at the edge of consciousness.