Truth told, folks still ask if Saul Crabtree sold his soul for the
perfect hymn. If he sold it to angels or devils. A Bristol newspaper
once “are his love songs closer to heaven than dying?” Others wonder how
he wrote a song so sad, everyone who heard it died of a broken
heart.Yet, more than anything else folks ponder in the town of Trinity,
one question why did this angel-toned preacher’s son, just as his fame
seemed ready to light the Appalachian nightsky forever, disappear
completely?In 1938, the decisions Saul makes will alter his family’s
story for generations. He and his eerily talented descendants ignite
religious fear throughout Red Pine County. They navigate chapels,
decaying sanatoriums, high school hallways, and a lingering myth from
their Cherokee heritage that follows them wherever they go. In the end,
however, it’s Saul’s precocious grandson, Eli, who must find answers to
these heartbreaking questions, who must enter this world rich in music
and voices, where people die to hear the unspoken, and salvation is only
found in the not-yet sung.