In the darkest corner of Grady Hagen's attic, wedged behind a rafter, is a picture postcard he kept for more than sixty years as a grim reminder of a heinous crime in which he had participated as a young man. The sepia-toned photo depicts the lynching of Rudy Montcrief, a black man accused of raping a white woman. Grady never told anyone of his involvement in the lynching, even his beloved wife Rachel who passed away almost a year ago, but whose ghost still roams his memory. Now, with his own mortality bearing down on him, he is compelled to go back to Arbutus, Mississippi and somehow pay for his sins. Clutching the postcard, Hagen returns to a town he long ago abandoned, and a past he could not. He travels with his 22-year old grandson Charlie who has no knowledge of the true purpose of the quest. Through their travels, the events that led to the hanging of Montcrief unfold, revealing a complex web of first love, lost love, friendship, racism and betrayal. What happened in 1942 and what happens on this redemption road are two integral parts of the same story, forever fused by a tragedy of monumental proportions.