An old woman dies and her stillborn, calcified baby is delivered, not in a hospital delivery room, but on an examination table in the coroner's laboratory. Before the coroner is able to record the findings, the baby is spirited away by the cleaning woman who places it in her church's outdoor manger scene.

Betsy Ross, amateur rock hound, discovers the stone baby in one of the church's Christmas storage boxes. She resurrects it from the other has-beens who have played the baby Jesus--Betsy Wetsy, Tiny Tears and Chatty Cathy--and figures that being made of stone, there must be a story inside. She chips away, looking for crystal revelations. Then she becomes carried away, attempting to carve away at her stony father as well as her dead grandfather's image. They were both early 1900 residents of northern Texas.

Betsy Ross chisels out a story. The story becomes a collection of stories, some made-up, some factual, a crazy quilt assemblage of tales and poetry. James Henry Ross, grandfather of Betsy, actually did die an alcoholic in the Rusk, Texas penitentiary psych ward; his affliction and legacy affected the people in Denton, Texas as well as the generations who have followed him to this day. The poem "Baptisms" describes actual immersions and also becomes metaphorical for Betsy Ross's story--her stepping down into history, her stepping up into the present time.