This story begins in 2022 with Arvis, the only surviving member of the gospel singing Stewart Family, celebrating her 98th birthday. She receives a gift – a book of water colors by a famous artist who happens to be a relative from her large extended Sargent family. While looking through the pictures, memories are triggered that inspire the revealing of her family history in Alabama.
Before taking the cloth and launching his singing family, Arvis's papa James Washington Stewart loses a beloved son, propelling him onto an odyssey that eventually results in a tragic act of violence in 1916. This action is a cause that appears to lay dormant for forty-two years, bubbling under the surface. In the rendering of this family's tale, obvious but inconvenient truths are often ignored, and it is difficult to tell the righteous from the sinful.
Through the good and the bad of this history, with unwavering, although possibly inappropriate humor, the soft power of the Sargent women led by Ma Sargent, a Creek Indian, flourishes. Ma's humor and cynicism toward the White Man's religion challenges her son-in-law the Reverend Stewart to cling to his faith. Truth is in the eye of the beholder, and constantly digging at the Reverend's lower natures, Ma demands that James Washington Stewart see the truth – his truth.
Ma passes her spirit down to all her six daughters, but especially to her eldest Kate. In turn, Kate allows Ma to pass this spirit of questioning what is true as well as her cynicism toward the White Man's religion down to her children. This is especially awkward because Kate's husband is the Reverend Stewart, and her children are members of the gospel singing Stewart Family, singing to inspire their papa's congregations.
Ma Sargent's strength, humor, and scorn eventually reach her great grandchildren who are not only influenced by their great grandmother's irreverence toward the White Man's religion but also by their grandfather's sternness and devout belief in that very religion.
After Reverend Stewart's death in the late 1940's, his actions from 1916 resurface like molten rock, casting hot fragments. By the late 1950's, what was festering under the surface erupts, bringing heartbreak to the Sargents and Stewarts. This tragedy is such that it splinters the harmony that had existed for over half a century among the Sargent sisters and their families, ending a powerfully positive and united force.
If the truth is a legitimate thing, this family history does not paint it is as a necessarily good thing.
