In the beginning, God created Sallie's Station. He molded it from red Georgia clay and Cherokee-brown rivers with names that flowed. He fashioned hills: green, secret places, ankle-deep in leaves, stitched with blackberry and honeysuckle, with a deep summer smell. At ten, Frannie Gordon thought he made it just for her, in a golden time where only good things happened. But then the threat of evil crept over the land, and Sallie's Station went to war . . .