In Dreaming Pigs the dubious honor of first human to receive a pig heart goes to an eight-year-old black girl who dies following the procedure. Her grandfather, Raney McCullars, goes to the hospital with a gun, planning extract "an eye for an eye" for using his baby as a guinea pig. But the Lord intervenes, offering Raney the opportunity to take what means most to the doctor who took what meant most to him. Amid a flurry of gunshots, the old man runs off with a pig bioengineered especially for xenotransplants using millions of federal research dollars.

Caught in the cross-fire are Evelyn Turner, a pretty but disillusioned graphic artist wanted for hit and run; Dean Malloy, a handsome veterinarian who waltzed with a log truck and now looks more like Frankenstein's monster than Lon Chaney, Jr. did; and a dog thought to be the reincarnation of an evangelical preacher. Running behind dodging bullets, in a twist of fate, they become Raney's accomplices.

On a zigzag route to the Big Easy, along back roads of Southern culture, the pig sits on the backseat of Dean Malloy's Jeep, sulking like a kidnapped princess, but events take a real turn when she loosens up and starts talking.

Two people are dead because of this pig and determination runs high. Everyone from hospital security to the FBI and foreign agents with vested interests are closing fast to retrieve this valuable experiment, but now her abductors are determined to save this little pig at all cost from her intended fate-butchered for parts.