Between 1815 and 1848, Primitive Baptists emerged as a distinct, dominant religious group in the area of the deepest South known as the Wiregrass country. John Crowley, a historian and former Primitive minister, chronicles their origins and expansion into South Georgia and Florida, documenting one of the strongest aspects of the inner life of the local piney-woods culture.

He navigates the history of this denomination through the twentieth century and the emergence of at least twenty mutually exclusive factions of Primitive Baptists in this specific region of the Deep South.