Poverty and pipe dreams mark the lives of Sid Lore and Janet Hollar, the outsider couple - he, from Tennessee, she, unable to speak in tongues (the mark of a true believer in her Pentecostal church) at the heart of Skipper's novel. A teenager when he moves to West Virginia's Union County, Sid spends the next decade trying to fit in, but a back injury prevents him from finding work that's anything above menial. The balance of power shifts when Janet becomes the breadwinner, emasculating an insecure Sid.