When the rising baseball star George Arbuckle is found drowned in a river, the devastation radiates through the family and the farm that they own and run. Set in the prairie of eastern Montana and written in the voice of George's brother, the shrewdly observant Blake Arbuckle, the story constellates around the choices that Blake is forced to make between home and independence and between loyalty and betrayal.

The escalating dramatic tension between family members becomes pronounced when the outsider rebel brother, Jack, abandons the family for a separate life only to return later to reclaim the family farm estate when he needs the money. A deserter gone AWOL during the World War, Jack proves himself as the dark focus of the family's arousing suspicions that he may have had a hand in his own brother's death. Rowland weaves a fascinating tale of the psychological wars within and the possible fratricide that bring a family apart and the redemption that brings them ultimately together again.