Raintree County

In 1859, John Wickliff Shawnessy is a young idealist living in rural Raintree County, Indiana, whose imagination is fired by the legend of the raintree said to preside over the landscape. He dares to venture into the county’s vast, dangerous swamp in search of it, a quest that ends in a near-fatal ordeal.

He has a college sweetheart, Nell Gaither, but his thoughts soon turn toward Susanna Drake Shawnessy, a wealthy New Orleans belle visiting the community. They share a brief, consuming affair, and upon Susanna’s return south she tells John she is pregnant. Out of duty and honor, he marries her, leaving Nell heartbroken.

They travel south to visit Susanna’s family, where John learns that Susanna’s mother went insane and died in a suspicious fire, along with her father and Henrietta, a slave believed to be the father’s concubine. Susanna suspects that Henrietta may be her biological mother, and as her condition grows more unstable she reveals that the pregnancy may have been a ruse.

As an abolitionist, Shawnessy does not fit with Susanna’s Southern kin, and the couple returns to Raintree County just before the Civil War. They have a son, Jimmy Shawnessy, born at the outbreak of the conflict, and John continues to teach while trying to keep the family intact.

In the war’s third year, Susanna’s paranoia deepens. She flees Indiana with Jimmy and seeks refuge among her Georgia kin. John enlists in the Union Army to search for his wife and child, fighting across the Western Theater and eventually discovering Jimmy at an old plantation. He learns that Susanna has been placed in an insane asylum and is wounded while carrying Jimmy back to the Northern lines, earning a discharge.

Returning north, John finds Susanna again and brings her home to Raintree. After Lincoln’s assassination and the war’s end, Nell urges him to consider politics, but the situation remains unsettled. Susanna, sacrificing her own welfare in a moment of desperate devotion, slips away into the swamp at night in a bid to find the legendary tree, with Jimmy following closely behind. A search party recovers Susanna’s body and carries Jimmy out to safety, while dawn reveals the tall, spectacular raintree glowing in the early light, seemingly untouched by the surrounding heartbreak.

Last Updated: October 07, 2025 at 08:40