Failed academic Frank Nichols and his "wife," Eudora, have arrived in the sleepy Georgia town of Whitbrow, where Frank hopes to write a history of his family's old estate, the Savoyard Plantation, and the horrors that occurred there. An aunt Frank never knew bequeathed him a modest homestead, so he and Eudora take the opportunity to break ties with the past. But in a letter delivered after her death, his aunt warned Frank not to live in the house—a warning Frank ignores.