Roland Tuttle is the fifth generation Tuttle to work the rocky Vermont farmland nestled between the slopes of Mount Ascutney and the Connecticut River, working much as his ancestors did, plowing with horses, living without electricity. In his thirty years alone on the farm, he has come to love his land, the meadows, the forested mountain, the distant view of the river. It is 1963. The future arrives in the form of the biggest construction project in the history of the United States, the Interstate Highway System.

Moving back and forth from the present to the past, from Roland's life as construction approaches to the history of the Tuttle family, Exit 8 is a story of personal choice, nature's beauty, and the often unremarked costs of progress as Roland is forced to decide how he should live when confronted with the loss of everything he loves.