In a fictional, unnamed Southern state, an apolitical farmer in the stateʻs "Delta" region, tries to help the campaign of his cousin, a member of a conservative Democratic machine. The opponent, an Ozark mountaineer, is probably based on Orval Faubus, the governor who in 1958 opposed the integration of schools in Little Rock.
The machine normally bribed the "Faubus" character out of running for the nomination. The book opens with them staring disconsolately at a huge pile of money, which the "Faubus" campaign has just declined to accept this time, dumping it on their desk.
The state is a thinly-disguised Arkansas. Author Gwaltney is on the jackets of 3 of his novels, called "The Asst. State Historian of Arkansas -- a job which he thoroughly enjoys";* then the ACting State Historian....ʻ then (during the Faubus administration) the former State Historian.
*"a job...he enjoys" --very untypical blurb of that time. Novelists normally listed a sequence of former jobs which no one could possibly enjoy.
