Eighteen-year-old Patience McDonough has a plan. Despite her parents' objections, She will attend Verity College in Hades, Mississippi, and live with her grandparents. She'll complete her degree in record time and go on to become a doctor. But things at the college are strangely neglected, her classwork is unexpectedly hard. Grand gets called out-of-town, and Poppa starts acting weird-so weird she suspects he has Alzheimer's. On top of that, she has to work extra hours at her student job inputting financial data for the college-boring!

But soon her job gets more interesting than she'd like. She finds millions of dollars are unaccounted for and something creepy is going on in the Big House basement. She discovers secrets tying her family into the dark beginnings of Verity, founded on a slave plantation, and she is forced to question the characters of people she has always trusted. Finally, confronted with a psychotic killer, Patience has to face facts: Her plans are not necessarily God's plans. Will the truth set her free?