Middletown is the puritanical village that time forgot. Jim and Caroline are trapped there by Jim’s sense of duty to his father, a sick and cantankerous old man who refuses to accept his illness. Something has to change… And it does. Jim’s brother, now Reverend Gabriel Hunter, returns after many years to bring the people back to God. His zeal totally disrupts the balance in Middletown, tearing asunder the existing familial harmony. A battle ensues between Jim and Gabriel that threatens to destroy everything each stands for and engulfing all of Middletown in a conflict with terrible consequences.