 It tells the story of Grange, his wife, their son Brownfield, and granddaughter Ruth.As a poor sharecropper, Grange is virtually a slave; in cotton-era Baker County, Georgia, the more he works, the more money he ends up owing to the man who owns the fields he works and the house he lives in.Eventually life becomes too much for him and he runs away from his debts to start a new life up North, leaving his family.