Shenandoah is one of the great mysteries of American folk music.

The year is 1877. An African-American keelman in his fifties has spent most of his life working the rivers and canal systems of the Shenandoah Valley and the Potomac. Respected for his skill but unable to advance beyond a certain point, he decides to leave the only home he has known for decades and travel west to the Missouri River of his childhood. 

From a high overlook above Harpers Ferry he gazes one last time upon the Shenandoah. In his imagination, the gentle South Fork Shenandoah becomes the river’s “daughter”—not a literal woman, but a symbol of the valley he has grown to love. Memories carry him back to his boyhood beside the Missouri, where he first watched steamboats emerging from the mist and dreamed of a life upon the water.