A clear-eyed fellow, determined to get what he wants out of life, while at the same time doing God's will, Wilton's dreams and aspirations are all too often thwarted by the even greater artistic aspirations of his wife Marva, by the Great Depression and the triumph of his bete noire Franklin Delano Roosevelt, as well as by the grinding provincial realites of life in Tecumseh and Stonewall Counties in the great Hoosier State of Indiana.