Faye Travers lives with her mother, Elsie, on Revival Road in the quiet New Hampshire town of Stiles and Stokes. Leading to a field where revival meetings once took place, Revival Road seemingly twists and turns into tangles, “[b]ut there is order in it to reward the patient watcher” (4). At the end of the road is the brick house of 56-year-old Kurt Krahe, a German artist. Although his assemblages made of large stones were once much-admired, he hasn’t produced any noteworthy work for years. Faye and Kurt are lovers, but their affair is clandestine and Kurt sneaks into Faye’s room during the night. If Elsie knows, she says nothing.

Kurt hires a teen named Davan Eyke to help him haul stones for an assemblage commissioned long ago. After Davan wrecked his father’s new car, his working-class parents evicted him from their house. When he moves into the cottage beside Kurt’s house, “the ravens watched […] and knew immediately that Davan Eyke would be trouble” (8). Indeed, Davan regards the ravens with animosity, and kills one with his crossbow.

Kurt is devoted to his daughter, a college student named Kendra and the product of his marriage to a woman who died in a car accident.