It's January 18, 2010, Duluth, Minnesota. Jeb Johnson, a sixty-two-year-old local newspaper owner, goes to one of the area hospitals to interview nurses about a story he is writing: Unsung Heroes. He approaches the door of a critical care unit and hears gurgling and gasping sounds. He puts his ear to the unit door. "Peanut!" a woman on the other side yells. "Melon!" a man yells. Just then the door flies open and he is knocked to the floor. A sickly looking man and woman emerge from the unit and lock eyes; they embrace as if they are lovers who were separated a long time ago.

Two weeks later, Jeb, having discovered the sickly couple are married, and retired school teachers, goes to their house to investigate why they yelled out for Peanut and Melon. The couple are strangely attracted to a red clay sandstone the size of an orange and enshrined on the coffee table. Then they tell him the story of how they found the sandstone and who Peanut and Melon were.

Reared across the pasture from each other in the red clay hills east of River Hills, Mississippi, Jud Sawyer and Cindy Musgrove find romantic urges growing within them. Their close-knit parents guard a secret about their conceptions during a disturbing picnic under an ancient oak. At the ages of fifteen, during the year of 1966, Jud and Cindy break open a sandstone geode and discover his and hers used wedding rings inscribed with their names. Their imaginations run wild, and they believe that they are a married couple from a parallel universe.

They secretly say wedding vows under the ancient oak and insist on wearing the rings, as they mistakenly feel their lunatic otherworldly selves taking control of their thoughts.

Disciplined at school and forbidden to see each other without a chaperone, they flee in a boat down the nearby Chickasawhay River, faking a drowning accident to win sympathy for their cause. They meet up with the resident river bottom witch, Mama Stokes, and she shows them a newspaper clipping of Peanut and Melon, a lunatic elderly couple, implying that Cindy and Jud are them. They laugh her to scorn, meet up with the school's handyman, who convinces them to return home.

Angry that their parents won't give up their secret, Jud wielding a shotgun, they flee in a stolen car and are surrounded on a bridge by their parents and townspeople. They perceive the townspeople as conspirators with their parents and flee on foot to kill themselves at the oak, believing their portal home is there. They are caught and sent to separate mental institutions.

Their parents, not knowing where the rings had come from, hire a private investigator, as Cindy and Jud cause havoc in the mental institutions, trying to reunite. He finds that Peanut and Melon had been arrested for stealing antique wedding rings, and had inscribed Cindy and Jud's names on them, planting them in Jud's yard. The parents notify Cindy and Jud's psychiatrists that Melon was sent to Jud's hospital, and Peanut to Cindy's, and drive home.

At home they find Mama Stokes sitting on their porch. She tells them that she had counseled Peanut and Melon to look for people that are mixed-up, as if they are in the wrong universe too. All angry, their dads come at her, ready to kill her. Their moms stop them, and Mama Stokes departs, not finishing how Peanut and Melon had accomplished their mission.

Their psychiatrists, at a loss of how to treat them, introduce Melon to Jud and Peanut to Cindy and ask them to listen to their stories of rebirths.

Peanut tells Cindy, and Melon tells Jud, in hideous fashion, how they planned Cindy and Jud to be the mediums of their rebirths into a perceived parallel world of sanity. They had spiked Jud's dad's moonshine with prescription narcotics, before a picnic under the oak. Their parents heavily sedated, Peanut and Melon have sex twice, each time with a different parent. The parents, afraid that they