The book is about a young man who is beaten regularly by his father until he can stand it no longer. One night he snaps and hits his father over the head with a baseball bat and escapes through his bedroom window. He travels to Florida to begin a new life where he meets Zelda a local prostitute who has a very good heart. Sometime later he calls his mother who informs him that he killed his father with the blow to his head. His mother in the meantime had submerged his father in a black bin liner in the middle of a lake. However the news that the lake was to be dredged causes a chain of events beyond their imaginations.