Abandoned by the Black Snake River as a child, Mudgirl is taken in by a naive middle-class couple who hope that their values can bury their adopted daughter's past. Years later, Meredith "M.R." Neukirchen has succeeded in becoming president of a hitherto male-dominated Ivy league. M.R. struggles with an on-again, off-again relation ship with a secret lover and with challenges to her leadership that she never saw coming. When M.R. has a psychic run-in with Mudgirl, M.R.'s own past rears to conflict with Mudgirl's, and both women are tested in their identities.