When twenty-one-year-old Hannah Gardner's father sells the family farm, she is cast onto the streets of Sundown, Georgia, where, having left her fundamentalist church, she grapples with the weight of her family's racist past. Working as a shampoo girl at a rinky-dink salon, Hannah tries to make ends meet cutting hair at the local funeral home. After finding herself in a precarious situation where she is raped by Hawkshaw Bales, a local criminal, Hannah is blackmailed by Bales to take custody of the resulting child. When Hannah is befriended by Margaret, the Black librarian, their interracial friendship develops into a love affair where Hannah finds the tenderness and protection she needs. Despite all the trials Hannah endures, she keeps a journal, her "Document of Life," and records Bible verses to show that even when you turn away from "God’s steady light, He lives within you." When the family farm is destroyed, Hannah saves some apple seeds in the hope of planting an orchard on new land and building a future with Margaret. With each haircut she gives at the funeral home, Hannah sends her customers to the hereafter with honor. HAIRCUTS FOR THE DEAD is a modern retelling of the Fall of Man in a small-town Peyton Place where Hannah is kicked out of Eden and forced to deal with race issues, her sexual identity, the burdens of her family's past, and challenges to her faith.