Pearl should be happy. She just married the love of her life, Lester Sinkey, and is ready to assume the role of wife and mother she'd dreamed about since she was a little girl. There's just one thing standing in her way. Every time she and Lester try to consummate, Pearl feels a searing pain like she's being sliced open with the clamming knives her family uses camping along the Mississippi River every summer. Disturbing memories of her great uncle, Mason, a veteran of the war between the states, soon resurface, and she fears something more sinister her mind is preventing her from recalling happened to her. Deciding it's the only way, Pearl gets herself committed to the insane asylum where Mason had also been a patient, a dire mistake...