Kudzu opens on a sultry July afternoon in 1987, as thirty-eight-year-old Lewis Ray Jacobs is driving from his home in Nashville to his native Stone Coal in Eastern Kentucky, to attend a funeral. He reflects on a similar hot day in 1962 when he and his best friend, Travis Wicker, sneak into the wake of a recently departed neighbor, and twelve-year-old Lewis Ray, on a dare, reaches into the coffin to take hold of the corpse's hand. Things don't go as planned. Thus begins our introduction to two friends whose stories are humorous, engaging, and poignant. We follow them through the ordeals of adolescence and the realities of adulthood—through pubescent pranks, emerging sexuality, and complicated relationships; through a life-changing accident; and now, nearly two decades after Lewis Ray has left Stone Coal, a funeral.