A thoughtful, ambitious young man marries into a fabled Southern family and becomes one of them...almost. Under the tutelage of his mother-in-law, Dolly Ward, Ted Brunson helps build Ward Mills, Inc., into one of the most respected textile manufacturing companies in the South. When Dolly dies, Ted faces not only his own grief and self-doubt, but also the open hostility of wife's brothers and the imminent decline of the American textile industry, while the Wards find themselves dependent on a man who, as Dolly once said, is not one of their kind.