A young man emerges from the hard-scrabble farm life that was the reality for generations before him, and is transformed by his discovery of literature.  The transformation that results from this discovery determines the course of his life.  He becomes a teacher.  It is a life that at once liberates his spirit, yet at the same time puts limits of what he is able to accomplish.  His life is a melancholy sequence of events and people who pass through his life, completely caught up in their own trajectories, only rarely appreciating who he is or the gift that he offered.