Civil War veteran Josiah Grey comes to a small town to be a gospel minister       In time he has a family and many friends, but he also finds friction with a few of his parishioners       A young doctor grates at what he feels is the parson's interference in the scientific treatment of patients, and a mine owner resents Grey's protection of an old sharecropper whose small plot of land stands in the way of his continued mining       Grey must face a public health crisis and a lynch mob as a result, all seen and described through the eyes and memory of Grey's young nephew John