Three generations of women from the same line. Are they destined by fate to repeat the cycle of failed relationships and heartache that haunts their family, or will the circle finally be broken with the youngest, Penny Hill Midway through her teenage years, young Pennys Hills fractious relationship with her mother causes her to be shipped off to live with her maternal grandmother in Picayune, Mississippi. She views the world as she feels it sees herdistant, remote, disconnected. From her mother, she learns to spite the world, to distrust anyone who moves easily in it. She accepts that fate is standing on the path with her, a train moving with slow deliberation along a one-way track. Under the care and control of her grandmother, Penny soon settles in to her new rural life, one fraught with family secrets and tempered by sudden tragedies that force her to face life head on. Through close study of the women admitted inside her grandmother's circle, Penny works to separate her destiny from the path fate saw fit to send her mother's way. She gains a firsthand view of the parcel of regrets her Gram has been left to carry. In the end, Penny comes to appreciate the power of self-worth, the ability it possesses to heal a person, and the extent to which we are incapacitated without it.