The only things that closeted Columbia undergrad Tony has in common with Jake, a mixed-race mountaineer with bad love luck, are his bone-bred biases and a raw attraction that defies his notions of happiness.

They meet in August 1960 in the Highlands, a hidden outpost of Appalachia on Manhattan's doorstep, where summer colonists from the city, struggling locals, and an insular mountain tribe uneasily coexist. Eddie, a troubled rebel, has just lost his girl to Jake's brother, and chafes under the thumb of his white-nationalist uncle, Sheriff Schmidt, who is locked in a racially charged reelection battle.

Three mysterious murders and the sheriff's cover-up of the crimes upend Tony and Jake's lives and roil their clannish world. The two men find themselves pitted against Schmidt in a high stakes search for the truth, and must confront their mutual distrust and the Highland's Nazi past to save their bond and their very lives.