"They that sow in tears shall reap in joy." The small smile rose again, brightening her face. "I remember well the day of your birth, Augustus."

"You do?" Augustus asked. It was then that his brother, Jefferson, pulled him away from her, and her veil again fell like a curtain. Although Augustus didn't know it yet, these were the first words he had ever spoken to his birth mother, and he would not uncover this secret for another eighteen years.

This beautifully constructed family saga spans three generations set all within the macabre world of the civil war era American funeral industry where weepers, warners, death photographers and the new practice of embalming the dead dwelled. For generations, the women of the Fenn family have been traditional "weepers"; paid mourners who attend wakes and weep for the dead. Their counterparts, the men of the True family, are undertakers, or "warners."

The current warner, Archer True is good at his job, but has a vice for whiskey and women, but the latter has disastrous repercussions as he's also a married man. The weepers were always veiled and always, like him, wore black. The day that he heard a youthful voice from under her veil and it intrigued him. It wasn't the older, raspy one he had been used to. When he finds himself irresistibly drawn to the "Weeper," Charlotte Fenn, their passionate affair results in pregnancy. The scandal of their unborn child threatens to destroy the reputations and livelihoods of both families.

To avoid ruin, Charlotte agrees to give her baby, Augustus, up to the Trues to be raised as the "twin" brother of Mrs. True's new baby. But a mother's love doesn't die easily. She may have given up her son, but she vows to watch and protect her Augustus grow up from a distance, secretly yearning to be close to him once more.

But every lie has its consequence, and as Augustus grows older, the truth of his origins will soon reveal itself in the most devastating way possible...