Goin' Through the Motions: Last Renderin's of a Questor and Rounder, most of which is interior monologue, employs a stylized dialect best described as "Southern Mountain English." In 1984, terminally ill and confined to a VA hospital, John Henry Shields reviews his life.
Prelude, a dialogue between John Henry's son Martin and his wife in 2012, opens the novel. The Prologue to Part One, presents John Henry on a day in 1932, when he undergoes an epiphany that sets him on his life's quest to live a "true life." In Part One, John Henry recollects various events in his life and begins to question if his life has been worthwhile. The Prologue to Part Two is set in the Airborne training camp in Fort Benning, GA, 1942, where on his first jump from a C-47, the awakening he experienced as a boy in 1932, is resurrected. In Part Two, John Henry continues to recall events in his life as well as choices he has made, some of which please him, while others fill him with regret. After his death, his wife Myra closes the action from 1984. The last section of the novel, Fortuitous Epilogue, recounts the dreams of John Martin Shields. In Prelude, Martin mentioned these to his wife Peggy as having occurred on six successive nights, before the Sunday marking the 28th anniversary of his father's death.