In the summer of 1976, recently widowed and childless Ora Lee Beckworth hires a homeless old black man to mow her lawn. The neighborhood children call him the Pee-can Man; their mothers call them inside whenever he appears. When he is arrested for murder, only Ora knows the truth about the man she calls Eddie. But truth is a fickle thing, and a lie is self-perpetuating. Ora and her maid Blanche soon find themselves in a web of lies that send an innocent man to prison for the rest of his life. Twenty-five years later, Ora sets out to tell the truth about the Pecan Man. Listen as she begins her story:
“Blanche worked for me through birth and death, joy and sorrow and Lord knows we had a lot of sorrow in all the time we spent under this roof. Most people figured she was crazy to put up with me all those years, but Blanche and I had an understanding. It was a vow we made back in 1976. Neither of us spoke of it afterward, but it hung between us like a spider web, fragile and easy to break, but danged hard to get shed of once the threads took hold.”
