Violence is a spectre haunting men, moving from father to son and out rippling out through society. A disastrous run-in with a meth dealer reminds Patterson Wells of this fact, though in truth pain and loss are never really far from his mind.

For Patterson, disaster is the norm. Working rough trade as a tree cutter and power line clearer in disaster zones, he exists alongside dangerous, desperate itinerant men. Both the work and the men keep him from fully confronting the pain he fights to keep at bay -- the loss of his young son and the havoc it wreaked on his marriage. Writing letters to his boy gives him some solace; the bottle brings more.

Returning to Colorado after an extended period of being on the road working, he stops by an acquaintance's place to take him fishing. Finding the man in an amphetamine delirium--and finding the man's wife tied up and abused in the bathroom--Patterson frees inadvertently takes himself down a path of violence by trying to do the right thing. In short order, aligned with a drug trafficker called Junior, he'll have killed a man, been made to save Junior's father from his own son, and experienced the best and worst of his ex-wife's attempts to bring him back into society through lawsuits and love. For Patterson, the only quiet he gets is on the Colorado mesa, trying to live off the grid, but never really able to disconnect himself from the pain or the world around him.

In a tale about violence passed from father to son, we are confronted with one man's attempt to get back to himself.