The book's narratives, poems, and drawings evoke the beauty and tragedy of Appalachia and the betrayal of the region's natural wealth. The novella relates the troubled family chronicle of Ramona and Woody Mann, and the friend they know simply as the Greek. Woody's and Ramona's families have lived for generations in the same rural Appalachian farming and mining community, but their fortunes have declined with ill health and the shifting economics of the region. Only the aspirations of their two surviving children -- Christine and Will -- hold out any resilient hope for the future as they face the demands of the outside world. However, it is the myth-like stories the Greek tells of Ramona's and Woody's third child -- a boy stillborn after a fall late in her pregnancy -- that suggest the encompassing tragedy in which their lives have moved.