In their small Michigan town, the Johnson family is the one that starts all the fights, has all the hard luck, and fuels all the gossip. Ray's older brother, Billy, has just been found murdered by someone who watched him crawl a mile down the road, head bloody; who smoked four Marlboros while watching Billy die. Hated as he was, who would go the extra length to actually kill him?

Ray - knotted up with sorrow and a strange sense of relief - now bears the weight of the town's curious gaze as they dredge up the dark secrets he has been trying to keep hidden. But Ray insists on telling his own story, one of shameful abuse transfigured by impossible love - a story that is violent, tender, often humorous, and, at the end, unexpectedly redemptive.