Outsourced software engineer Jacob Martin is trying to make the best of a divorce and mid-life crisis when he gets a call at two o’clock Sunday morning from his mother. His sister has been arrested for murder, and his father is near death.

Thus begins an adventure that takes Jake and his golden retriever from their Colorado retreat to a backwater town in the Missouri Ozarks where he gets on the wrong side of a sheriff deputy after hiring a crafty lawyer who gets Megan released on a technicality over a suicide note.

Then, just as Jake is ready to go back home, she drops a bombshell with a story straight from a Louis L’Amour novel.