Out of the blue Jack Fletcher, a former hot-shot surf photographer now surviving on hack work, cheap beer and muscle relaxants, gets a call from the surfing magazine he worked for back in his glory days. Assigned to photograph Drew Harmon surfing the remote reef known as 'Heart Attacks', the photographer can't quite believe his luck: both the surfer and the wave are the stuff of legend, and mean a ticket back into the big time.

With two young surf punks in tow, Fletcher heads off for the grim wilderness of Northern California, and the Indian territory where Harmon now lives with his half-mad wife Kendra, who roams the woods at night wearing the clothes of a murdered girl. This is not what Jack had expected, and things get worse.

To reach the fabled Heart Attacks and ride the winter waves Harmon, Fletcher and the punks must cross the tract of blasted headland known to the local Hupa, Yurok and Tolowan Indians as 'The Devil's Hoof'. When a child dies in an accident, the white men are blamed; the Indians, swearing vengeance, kidnap and brutalise Kendra, then set off to kill the surfers.

In this desolate wasteland the search for the perfect wave becomes a quest for survival, as events lead inevitably to their final, tragic climax.