Having fled his family's farm at eighteen with a promise never to return, Guy Pehrsson is drawn back into his past when he receives his grandfather's ominous letter, "Trouble here. Come home when you can." He returns to discover a place both wholly familiar and barely recognizable and is cast into the center of an interracial land dispute with the exigencies of war.

Widely acclaimed when first published in the eighties, the timeless novel Red Earth, White Earth showcases Will Weaver's rough ease with language and storytelling, frankly depicting life's uneven terrain and crooked paths.