When Tony Jaegyl goes to Florida to pack up the belongings of his old friend Walter Binn, who has been killed in an automobile accident, he is not prepared for the odd cast of characters he is about to become involved with: a young Navajo with a dying and ornery father, a violent-tempered aunt, and a girlfriend who claims that Walter's death was no accident, a racist neighbor bent on revenge, a couple of Mexican thugs who run a bookstore with a sideline of breaking and entering, a contractor's wife who likes revealing secrets-her own and other people's, her husband, who is collecting huge sums from both the state and private donors to build a highly controversial bypass, a former student of Tony's who wants to be a modern-day Sir Galahad but can't make anybody take him seriously, and a gas jockey with Communist leanings who answers to the name of Ugly. It's a tough lot to deal with, and after Tony has saved a young girl from the unwanted attentions of a local brute and been attacked in his bed by a wild man, it only gets tougher when he comes across one of them dead with a knife in his chest.