It's 1922, and thirteen-year-old Woodrow Harper has moved with his
widowed mother to his father's hometown of Lawton, Oklahoma. Perhaps
here he will be able to find the closeness to his father that eluded him
when his father was alive. He is befriended by his new next-door
neighbor, a powerful state senator who becomes the father figure Woodrow
always wanted, who understands him in a way his own father never did.
The senator introduces Woodrow to the "best" people in town, but Woodrow
soon realizes the "best" people have some terrible secrets, and to be
accepted by them he has to do things that make him abandon his own
values, culminating in a terrifying act of violence close to home.