This strong Southern gothic and historical story follows a mysterious drifter named Abraham to a cove called Two-Hill outside of Asheville, North Carolina. Abraham is progress personified. And progress brings with it good and bad. Through the course of the novel, Two-Hill is radically changed by commerce and traffic, and Abraham is at the center of it all. He becomes a father figure to the town and everyone in the community becomes indebted to him in one way or another. His existence begins to dissipate, no longer seen as a man at all, but a legend, a myth, a clich? of a kindly slave-owner of his antebellum past in a mansion up on the hill. Is he good? Is he bad? One may as well try to answer that question about Progress itself. It is neither and both. It is ambiguous and to be judged by the individual. Yet it is overwhelmingly powerful, as is the man they call Abraham Two-Hill.