"Whatever sins may have been attached to the front grille of my father's Eldorado were washed away and disappeared down a drain at seven o'clock that October morning." Intoxicated after a party with his high school football team, Neil Garvin, 17, first-string quarterback with the "million-dollar arm," accidentally murders a classmate, Ian Curtis. Neil's father, the sheriff of their small town, Carmen, Nevada, covers up for his son and an awkward tension is born between them.

The book delves into the emotionally fraught relationship between Neil and his father, ."..most people thought he was just this charming guy who really loved his son. He hardly showed his other side, at least not outside the house." His "other side" being the side that mentally and sometimes physically abuses Neil. Neil even blames his father for the disappearance of his mother when he was a toddler.

Ian's parents report their son missing, and most of the student's from Neil's high school, including himself and his teammates unite in a search led by Neil's father. The reader cannot help but feel for Neil, even though he knows Neil has done something wrong. The novel becomes even more suspenseful once the victim's uncle, an FBI agent, is called in to investigate. As the FBI closes in on the Garvin's, Neil and his father must come to terms with and face some heart wrenching truths about their tragic past.

"He corrected the car and then killed the lights again and that was when I realized that there was no such thing as a mistake. Everything I had ever learned I'd learned from my father. Ian Curtis had not been an accident. I had been on a collision course with him for years."