When Richie Thorpe and his ragtag religious band of ex-thieves
arrive in the High Plains town of Suborney, Colorado, Tommy Sandor
is captivated by the group. It's the summer of 1980 in the dusty,
junkyard town, and the seventeen-year-old is wrestling with the
forces shaping America and himself: the Iran hostage crisis, the
incoming tide of Ronald Reagan's presidency, and the political rise
of the Christian Right. As Tommy is increasingly drawn to the
group, his mother, Connie, grows frantic. She has been hiding the
truth from her son, telling him that his father was a saxophonist
from New York who never knew he had a child, and is lying low in
Suborney to hide from Tommy's actual father—Richie Thorpe. Connie
knows Richie has come for his son, and though she has witnessed
Thorpe's mysterious powers, the desperation to protect her lie, her
son, and their life begets a venom with an elemental power that
threatens the whole town.