Hopkins Carver, a detective in a small town in Illinois, is caught between The Society, a white supremacist group headed by a disgraced pastor, and ARAFO, a violent anti-fascist resistance movement. The situation becomes critical when a black girl is found dead in an abandoned farmhouse. Is she just another victim in a local suicide epidemic, or is The Society involved? The town is on edge, and Carver may be losing his mind to Grief Machine, a new drug that has hit the town. Reality and memory blend with history and hallucination, and the lines between man and animal, between one’s own mind and the rest of the world, are blurred as the war reaches a fever pitch.