Finding life to be daunting, a young boy finds escape, wandering along through ancient paths, beaten down by time. Deep inside the shadows of a hallowed wood, while trying to find himself, he falls in search of a God he hopes someday to understand. Having yet but one earthly dream, to play his fiddle and sing, he finds himself in the shackles of trying to live out another man's dream--yet to be inherited. His father's longtime dream of trying to hold on to a little piece of farming land--Riverland by name, proper deeds of title at the last found to be in jeopardy.
Scrambling his way through life, Henry Evans, hoping to keep his own dream alive, inherits to his son the dreams of his own future to be lived out in proxy. Accepting by obligation, the responsibility of securing a proper title to the family farm, Henry's last remaining son, Roe, finds himself living out the shattered dreams of his father. Miss Mamie and Charcoal, people of another color trying desperately to guide him through the deep shadows of life, find a place in the heart of the whole family, believing the color of one's face to be only skin deep, love and loyalty being the only things in life that really matter. Until finally, the stars of morning come to sing!