Bobby is a crop insurance salesman in rural Kentucky. He is unmarried with no children of his own, but he often spends time with his brother, Wallace, and his twelve-year-old nephew, Wallace Jr. One Sunday as they’re driving home from visiting their mother in a nursing home, their car gets a flat tire. As Bobby tinkers with the spare, two bears approach the family with torches in hand. The family stays very still and Bobby quickly finishes changing the tire. They get in the car and drive off, too surprised to speak. Bobby returns to visit his mother on Tuesday. She’s a tobacco-chewing former bus driver who is at peace with the possibility of death. He explains the bear occurrence, and she marvels. The next day, Wallace Jr. comes to stay with Bobby at the family farm while his parents are at a Christian real estate conference in South Carolina. Bobby and Wallace Jr. watch news coverage of the bear story. Fire-starting bears are popping up all over the southeastern United States, and no one can figure out how they learned these skills. On Thursday, Bobby keeps Wallace Jr. home to teach him how to change a tire. Armed with a gun and an axe, they venture into the woody highway medians where the bears’ fires have been spotted. There, they find a deserted campfire. In a show of hospitality, Bobby chops wood for the bears. He feels their eyes on him, and he wants them to know that he's not a threat. That evening, they visit Bobby’s mother, and they watch more news stories about the bears. She tells them not to bother visiting on Sunday because she’s got her hand on heaven’s gate. On Saturday, the home calls Bobby to report that his mother is missing. He and Wallace Jr. make their way to the highway median. There, they find the old woman sitting with ten bears around a smoldering flame. They sit a while in comfortable silence with the calmed creatures. Three generations fall asleep under the moonlight, soothed by the bears’ crackling fire. In the morning, Bobby wakes to find that his mother has died. After the funeral, Bobby returns to the bears’ encampment. He gathers some berries and places them on his mother’s grave on the next Sunday.