After the death of their mother, Maryrell, Jon Karl and Summer Odom are raised in the town of Douvale by their grandmother, Mildra, whose boss, Spruill Dawes, steps into the role of surrogate father. Jon Karl befriends his son Millard. Jon Karl, sexually precocious, finds himself increasingly humiliated by the ravenousness of Douvale women and yearns for a hermit life while mythologizing the few women he likes to think actually loved him. Summer attracts oddball boys which sends her through a series of ill-suited males and strange jobs.
Complications arise when Balch, a local sociopathic barber, becomes obsessed with Jon Karl, and even more arise when Jon Karl catches the eye of Vance, a young strip club owner and porn filmmaker. Then, when Jon Karl gets into an ill-advised cannabis-growing scheme, he leaves himself vulnerable to blackmail by Vance. Things get worse when Jon Karl is sentenced to the for-profit Baptist correction center run by Spruill's hated rival, Pruet Echols, and he finds Balch working there. One day, Summer's intuition of something wrong sends her, Spruill, and the sheriff into a ghastly scene and a dangerous rescue of Jon Karl. Jon Karl is released to pursue at last the life he longs for, but becomes increasingly seduced by the strange energy of an abandoned roadside house and the oddly familiar portal it seems to offer. Summer has uneasy premonitions about the house, and with the legacy of a young son from one of her earlier boyfriends, and at last a promising relationship with the latest, survives.