An Arkansas Planter

The novel portrays the waning life of a Southern planter and his household on a sprawling Arkansas estate as they adapt after the Civil War. It follows Major John Cranceford, a bluff and humorous river man who must reconcile vanished gentry with practical toil, his religious wife, and their family, alongside the rhythms of enslaved and freed Black laborers and neighboring poor farmers. Episodes trace the plantation's landscape, social rituals, economic pressures, and personal adjustments, exploring themes of pride, adaptation, memory, and the uneasy mingling of old social hierarchies with changing political and moral realities.