It's 1975. Johnny Riles leads a lonesome, whiskey-soaked existence on Colorado's high prairie. Abandoned by his parents, who moved away after Johnny accidentally shot his father, and absent his buffoonish younger brother, who has left home to star in the American Basketball Association, Johnny is an uncommonly unhappy man.

Johnny is awoken from a depressive stupor after an autumn snowstorm leads him to cross paths with a brutal killer. Thus do his trials begin. The hunt for the killer splinters Johnny's psyche into dangerous and bizarre shards, driving him to beneath the stark western landscape--both literally and figuratively--to unearth the truths behind his nightmares, to search for vengeance, to bargain for his brother's soul, and to plead for a sober reason to live.