Fourteen-year-old Tabitha Martin's heart is waiting on her brother Jasper to come home from his first semester at college. It's the 1960s, and in this small Baptist town where Gospel is the only acceptable music and judgment leaks from mouths like water from rusted pipes, Jasper is a hero for pursuing higher education. But when Jasper arrives with a pregnant troublemaker, the family is in danger of being Gossip Central, which comes with a ticket to disgrace. Tabitha's mother allows this Brandy girl with her baby-swelled body into their already overcrowded home, which leads Tabitha and her sister to believe they will be aunts to their brother's child. Although the pregnancy is a dark, shameful secret, Brandy is a spark that ignites Tabitha's life and sets the town on fire, even as it opens up a heavy rain cloud of secrets that threatens to drown their family.