A man pursuing his doctorate explores the history of the American South through the journals and letters of a long-dead ancestor who manumitted all the enslaved people on his plantation after an affair gone wrong.

A mysterious man able to travel through time and space on a whim has a simple job: he must do one good deed every day. What exactly a "good deed" is, however, remains unclear; the bolder his interference becomes, the less sure he is that he's leaving the world better off.