A prodigal son must solve the mystery of his philandering father’s murder if he hopes to eradicate his own demons. Connor Pierce enlisted in the Air Force to escape his crazy-making family. Years later, half a world away in Okinawa, Japan, Conner sees his philandering father in the mirror. Discovery of his most recent affair has his wife packing up the kids and Connor staring into the abysmal loneliness and desperation of his childhood when the phone rings. Dixon Pierce, the father he hates, is dead, sending Connor into the center of his pain. Thus begins the reluctant prodigal son’s return to the fatherland. Before Connor can plant his father’s discarded body in the ground, he concludes that the strange circumstances of Dixon Pierce’s departure, slathered with oil and sexed to death, equal murder. Engaging reluctant help from the high school cohorts he once abandoned, Deputy Ruiz and alluring ex-lover Jasia, Connor searches for answers — ultimately confronting his own failings as a husband and father. The unauthorized investigation pits them against a cuckolded lawman, a potential mobster, dark family secrets, a second murder and a devastating fire at the homestead. First contemplating the horrifying possibility that one of his own family members killed their dishonorable patriarch, and then tripping into lustful hedonism with the forbidden Jasia, Connor eventually stands contemplating suicide beside the freezing waters of the Yellowstone River when a bullet sends him tumbling toward a cold, watery death. With renewed determination to find out “what the hell happened” to his family that led to his father’s murder, Connor moves toward the final showdown. Caught between Dixon’s killer and the very real threat looming against his own family across the Pacific, due to his sexual betrayal, Connor searches for redemption.