It is the summer of 1944, and nine-year-old Andy Catlett is engrossed in the big easy countryside near Port William, Kentucky - the clear cool water of Chatham Spring, fields full of tumblebugs and meadowlarks, and a sky so huge that it seems "a great gape of vision." But calamity strikes Andy's world on a hot July afternoon when his Uncle Andrew is murdered.

Life's direct simplicity is suddenly gone, replaced by sadness, loss, and the mystery surrounding Uncle Andrew's death. No one tells the boy why his uncle and namesake was murdered, and the question follows Andy into manhood.

Wendell Berry tackles the slippery nature of truth as Andy gathers fragments of recollection years after the murder, accumulating details about his uncle's death and life. Through the process he comes to learn the limits of fact, that "the truth about us, though it must lie all around us every day, is mostly hidden from us, like birds' nests in the woods."