Cecil, son of Anna and Dr. Albert Morgan, was raised in a well-to-do neighborhood in the 1930s. Always feeling different -- separate -- from everyone around him, after college, he relocates to an Appalachian Mountain cabin.
Lonely at first, Cecil spends a great deal of time talking to himself. One night, he hears a song on a breeze with a long note held for fourteen beats. As far as Cecil knows, he is alone on that side of the desolate mountain, so who is singing?
He eventually meets up with the mysterious mountain man without a name, a man who also lives separated from the world. Was his seclusion a choice? When illness occurs, will the aid Cecil brings during a time when doctors treat mental illness like a crime and homosexuality as a mental illness make things better or worse?
