Landon and Alka meet in a graveyard during a rainstorm and sleep together, beginning their life together.

Landon cuts Alka's father's nose open with a knife to remove his soul after discovering he beat Alka.

White miners shatter Landon's kneecap in a racist attack while he works in an Arkansas mine.

The Carpenter family settles in a rundown house in Breathed, Ohio that locals believe is cursed.

Alka tries to die by suicide by slitting her wrists after Betty removes the yellow cellophane covering her face.

The three sisters steal Landon's moonshine and accidentally burn down a church while drinking in the woods.

Betty watches in silence from the barn loft as Leland rapes Fraya after trapping her hair in a window crank.

Fraya uses a piece of bark to try to end her pregnancy, and a doctor is called to remove it from her body.

On Betty's ninth birthday, Alka forces Betty to stay and listen as she describes being raped by her own father throughout her childhood.

Trustin falls from the ladder of the town water tower and dies before Fraya can get help.

Betty discovers Fraya dead and cold in her apartment the morning after a visit, her death ruled a suicide.

Leland confesses to Betty that he murdered Fraya by forcing her allergic hand into a jar containing a bee.

Betty points a shotgun at Leland while Lint hurls rocks at him, and neither sibling helps as Leland feels the fires of hell.

Landon collapses at home bleeding profusely from his mouth and dies in the hospital.

Betty leaves Breathed in a stranger's car and releases a red balloon with a letter to her dead father from the window.

Betty is the story of the Carpenter family, beginning when Cherokee gravedigger Landon meets Alka in a graveyard and forges a life with her despite hardship and poverty. Landon's Cherokee heritage shapes the family's values, but the outside world is hostile — white miners cripple him in an Arkansas mine, forcing the family to eventually settle in the Ohio town of Breathed. Betty grows up amid her mother's depression and suicide attempt, her sister Fraya's secret abuse and eventual death, and the unspeakable crimes of her eldest brother Leland. The accidental death of her beloved brother Trustin fractures the family further, and Landon himself slowly deteriorates before dying. After Landon's death, Betty finally confronts Leland with the full weight of his crimes before leaving Breathed to begin her own life.

The Carpenter family's most pivotal moments, from love and survival to loss and justice.

Alka's father beats her after seeing she is pregnant, and she sets out to find the gravedigger to marry.

After the racist mine attack in Arkansas, the family spends two years traveling across the United States.

Landon builds a stage near the garden that the three sisters name A Faraway Place for singing, writing, and play.

On Betty's first day of school, her teacher tells racist lies about Native Americans directly to the class.

Landon pins real lemons to the trees in their yard to create a lemon grove for Alka after she comes home from the hospital.

Betty reaches into her mother's nylons drawer and finds hidden photos of a frightened young Alka with an angry older man.

Fraya moves out of the family home to live in an apartment above the Dandelion Dimes cafe where she works.

Flossie gets her first period, and she and Betty dance together in the Cherokee tradition to ease her pain.

After Grandpa Lark's funeral, Mamaw Lark allows the Carpenter grandchildren inside her house for the first time.

Alka kills the stray mother cat by throwing it from a window, then forces Betty's hands onto the quilt as she smashes the litter of kittens.

Flossie confesses to Betty that she was raped by a local boy, and Betty hitchhikes to test whether the word no still means something.

Landon and Betty scatter Fraya's ashes alone around Breathed after Leland flees town and the other siblings make excuses.

Trustin's funeral ends with Betty fainting and falling into the open grave while trying to deliver a eulogy.

Flossie ties Nova's shoelace to the train tracks as a locomotive approaches; Betty pleads with her until she pulls him free just in time.

Lint decides to stay in Breathed to care for Alka and continue Landon's medicine business after Betty announces she is leaving.

Beneath the headline tragedies of the Carpenter family lies a world of equally important moments that define Betty's childhood. Landon builds A Faraway Place, a stage where his daughters sing, dream, and write, while Betty endures racist classrooms and the family scrapes through poverty in Breathed. The sisters experience the painful transitions of growing up alongside their mother's volatility and cruelty, and the secrets that bind them grow heavier with each passing year. As the siblings age and the household splinters — through marriage, loss, and escape — Betty bears witness to each person's story and buries the ones she cannot speak aloud. The pool closes with Lint choosing to remain in Breathed while Betty steps toward her own future, marking the quiet dissolution of the family Landon built.

The quieter struggles and significant turning points shaping the Carpenter siblings' daily lives.

Landon makes Betty a warrior drink from a rattlesnake tooth and arrowhead and runs around the barn to give her courage after she is bullied at school.

An eagle drops one of the sisters' prayers from its nest, and Betty reads Fraya's handwriting: I want to be free, please set me free from him.

Ruthis accuses Betty of stealing her coin purse; the teacher beats Betty with a ruler before Ruthis finds the purse in her own desk.

Alka tells Fraya and Betty that the same bark Landon gave a constipated woman can also be used to end an unwanted pregnancy.

Fraya cuts off all her hair, and when Betty admits what she saw in the barn, Fraya slaps her and threatens to die by suicide if Betty tells anyone.

Landon shows Betty a willow tree with all the children's names carved inside it and gives her a hand-carved wooden guardian figure.

Alka tells Betty she once boarded a bus to leave Landon forever but changed her mind after he sold his clothes to give her travel money.

Betty and Trustin visit Ms. Pleasant, whose face is always masked; she explains that God disfigured her for witnessing evil and doing nothing.

Betty grabs her father's pocketknife and cuts into Leland's nose after he tells her she is just as guilty as he is for Fraya's rape.

Betty rips off Ms. Pleasant's mask to reveal a normal face; the distressed woman destroys her own home smashing furniture and breaking windows.

Betty wears shorts to school; the principal tells her the Cherokees were conquered because they gave women too much power.

Leland ruins the family's corn in the garden, and Betty begins to tell Landon what she witnessed before stopping herself.

Fraya slits her own wrist in front of the family in the garden to prevent Betty from finally exposing Leland's crimes to Landon.

Betty turns 17, begins taking her writing seriously, and for the first time starts to see herself as genuinely beautiful.

Alka presses the Apache tear obsidian into Betty's hand and says a girl comes of age against the knife as Betty prepares to leave Breathed.

Betty is a story of truths gradually uncovered — about family loyalty, inherited trauma, and the cost of silence. Betty slowly discovers the hidden stories of the women around her through prayers dropped by eagles, secrets buried in drawers, and confessions spoken under duress. Each revelation reshapes her understanding of love, guilt, and her own complicity in what she witnessed. Confrontations with Leland and the enigmatic Ms. Pleasant force Betty to reckon with the difference between bearing witness and taking action. By the time she stands on the edge of adulthood, she has transformed from a girl who buried secrets beneath a stage to a young woman prepared to carry those stories into the world beyond Breathed.

The revelations, confrontations, and discoveries that reshape Betty's understanding of truth and identity.