Seriously, fuck Pete Banning.

The first third of this book is self-righteous shitlord Pete Banning refusing to tell anyone why he murdered a preacher in cold blood in the middle of the day, and screws over his entire family and all the tenants of his farm because everything is going right to the family of the preacher. At the end of this first book he dies, and that is satisfying.

The second third of the book backtracks to Pete's time in the war. I don't give a shit, because he's already dead, and I feel like he deserves it. So this is a slog that I assume is supposed to make me sympathetic, but is just a huge waste of time.

The final third of the book you watch his children fall apart and his wife kill herself and his family and tenants lose everything, all because, as previously discussed, Pete is a piece of shit. The big reveal is that his wife was banging a black guy, which was illegal in the 40s, and the preacher helped her get an abortion. This devastates the children when they find out, but has no emotional punch for the modern reader because we're not fucking 1940s Mississippi racists.

TL;DR Pete kills a guy who didn't deserve and fucks up a whole lot of lives. Fuck Pete Banning.