Larry Cameron is a veteran of hazard zones. As a native of Raysburg, West Virginia, a flood plain development on the Ohio River, he grew up in one; as a geography student who researched hazard zones on the Ohio River, he became an expert on them; and now, in the throes of mid-life, Larry is facing another hazard zone - the unfinished business of his past.

After a long, self-imposed absence, Larry returns to Raysburg to care for his ailing mother. As he rediscovers his home town, memories of his troubled childhood surface and he is forced to come to terms with the people and events that shaped his adult life - the father he never knew, the alcoholic stepfather who raised him, and the reckless, doomed stepbrother who was his closest companion.