Ray Solomon can leave his hometown behind. His wife and daughter too. But Ray’s past actions and his thirst for alcohol have followed him to his new place in the foothills of Southern Appalachia. Here, his attempt to start anew falls apart in brutal fashion.

It was the final day of the ’82 World’s Fair and banker Finley Cross’s annual Halloween party epitomized the era of big money, luxury cars, grandiose homes, bulging bags of powder, and bloated egos. But the next day, as masks lay strewn about the floors of the criminally wealthy, the hangovers can’t be soothed with aspirin and a Bloody Mary.

It’s 1969 and widower Bobby Tolliver is doing his best to raise his teenaged daughter and young son alone. But the Tolliver clan has a history of lawlessness, even when they are the law. Bobby learns the depths of human depravity after discovering a girl chained up in a shed on his family’s property.

Gerald McNabb is dying of cancer. The loathsome liveaboard attempts to clear his conscience by offering a caregiver his account of the massacre at the Whistle Mountain Resort back in the summer of ’69. What circumstances could have brought a twelve-year-old Gerald McNabb and petty criminal Bobby Tolliver to Whistle Mountain on that infamous night?