In February, 1962, as the civil rights movement reaches Bayonne, Louisiana, a New York journalist arrives to interview Jane Pittman, who has just turned 110. She tells him her story dating back to her earliest memories before slavery ended. In between the chapters of her life, the present-day struggles of Blacks in Bayonne, urged on by Jimmy, are dramatized.

In 1750, an adulterous preacher is ejected from a small British colony with his motley crew of followers, who make their way downriver to establish a new settlement of their own beyond the western frontier.