Feeling lost and disconnected, with no family of his own, veteran Sherman Oliver sets out to the countryside in search of the soldier who saved him back in the war. That man, Franklin Page, has long since moved on - to a wife, two children, and a reliable job in a reliably safe and quiet rural town. Upon arriving, Sherman seems at first a harmless if awkward shell of a man. But as he inserts himself further into the Pages' life, he reveals himself to be an angry, unstable individual prone to great jealousy and deep resentment. The stability Franklin worked so hard to establish is soon threatened, and the violence he believed he'd left behind in the war begins to re-emerge and cloud over both the household and the town itself.