Poplar Farm has been in Louise`s family for generations, inherited by her sharecropping forebear from a white landowner after a lynching. Now, the farm has been carved up, the trees torn down; a mini-massacre replicating the destruction of lives & societies taking place all over America. Architect of this destruction is Paul Krovik, a property developer soon driven insane by the failure of his dream. Julia & Nathaniel arrive from Boston with their son, Copley, & buy up Paul`s signature home in a foreclosure sale. They move into the half-finished subdivision & settle in to their brave new world. Yet violence lies just beneath the surface of this l&, & simmers deep within Nathaniel. The great trees bear witness, Louise lives on in her beleaguered farmhouse, & as reality shifts, & the edges of what is right & wrong blur & are lost, Copley becomes convinced that someone is living in the house with them.