Olympus, Texas

Set in the fictional small town of Olympus, Texas, near the Brazos River, the novel follows the Briscoe family across one catastrophic week as buried resentments, returning children, and a fatal accident fracture an already damaged clan.

Peter Briscoe, a 60-year-old real estate agent, and his wife June, a 55-year-old cattle rancher, live in a large white house in the Texas bottomland. Their marriage has survived Peter's serial infidelity: an affair before their wedding that produced a son named Burke, and a later affair with a woman named Lee that produced twins, Artie and Arlo. After his last betrayal, June extracted a promise: One more transgression and she would disappear from his life forever. He has kept that promise for 13 years, but the marriage remains defined by June's contained rage.

On a Friday morning, Peter's brother Hayden, who runs the local funeral home, calls with news: March, Peter and June's youngest son, has returned to Olympus after two and a half years of self-imposed exile. March left after his affair with Vera, the wife of his older brother Hap, was publicly exposed at a Christmas parade. He has been working casino security in New Mexico. March has intermittent explosive disorder, a condition that causes him to black out during fits of rage with no memory afterward. His destructive episodes have made him the family's perpetual source of shame.

June resists March's return, but Peter invites him to lunch. Before the family can gather, Hap arrives and attacks March's truck with a sledgehammer. March blacks out and tackles his brother. Artie, Peter's daughter from his affair with Lee and March's half-sister, separates them with a shovel. June reminds March he can still leave.

Artie is secretly dating Ryan Barry, an employee at Hap's auto body shop, and has hidden the relationship from her twin brother Arlo, a country musician unexpectedly home after his tour manager abandoned him. Arlo needs Artie to manage his summer tour, but she refuses, unwilling to leave Ryan. Ryan's mother, Lavinia Barry, bears a grudge against Peter for exploiting her family financially years earlier, costing them their homestead and forcing them out of Olympus. When Arlo discovers the relationship through a voicemail March left, he feels betrayed. The twins' lifelong bond, forged during a childhood marked by Lee's depression and Peter's absence, begins to crack. As children, they promised to always put each other first, and Arlo sees Artie's love for Ryan as a violation of that pact.

Meanwhile, March visits Vera, telling himself he only wants to discuss his return. Vera, unhappy in her marriage, seduces him. She reveals her deeper grievance: Years ago, she realized that what she took as Hap's defining moment of empathy had been sarcasm. She came to see his kindness as performance and felt unseen in the marriage. She used the original affair with March not out of love but to force Hap to end a marriage she could not leave. March leaves guilt-stricken. On Saturday night at the local bar, Vera corners him, drunk, and announces she will tell Hap she is leaving. March begs her to wait, fearing Hap will blame him.

June, meanwhile, finds unexpected solace in Cole Doherty, a visiting veterinarian filling in for the local vet. Over two days of working cattle together, she confides in Cole about her marriage with a candor she has never shown anyone.

On Sunday morning, Artie and Arlo meet at her fishing spot on the Brazos. Artie carries a rifle, having heard about a rabid skunk. Unknown to her, Ryan arrived early and proposed a bet to Arlo: If he could swim a hundred yards upstream against the current, Arlo would stop opposing the relationship. Ryan plunged in and succeeded. Watching him, Arlo felt a fleeting, involuntary wish for Ryan to die. When Artie arrives, Arlo spots a dark shape in the water and dares her to hit it. Acting on impulse, she loads, aims, and fires. The shape is Ryan. Arlo drags his body to shore. Ryan is dead.

Arlo convinces the devastated Artie to let him claim he fired the shot, arguing her hunting expertise means no one would believe the shot was accidental while his inexperience makes recklessness plausible. In shock, Artie agrees. Sheriff Muñoz questions both twins, and Arlo delivers the rehearsed story.

Artie withdraws from Arlo and goes to stay with Lee. Thea, Peter and June's eldest daughter and a prosecutor in Chicago, flies in. Multiple crises erupt: Hap discovers March visited Vera and beats him, though March does not black out this time, recognizing the restraint as progress. Vera declares she is leaving the marriage. Peter tells March to leave town after the funeral.

Artie meets with Ryan's family at the funeral home. Lavinia insists the service be held in Olympus and that Arlo attend. Despite her bitterness, she tells Artie, "There's not enough care in the world to keep us all safe" (214). On Monday night, June drives to meet Cole. They share raw cookie dough and talk about love and pain. June kisses him, crossing a line she told herself she never would.

On Tuesday night, Artie reads three texts from Arlo. The last invokes their childhood promise, and she realizes Arlo knew Ryan was in the river when he dared her to shoot. She confronts him; his silence confirms it. She drops him at the funeral home with Ryan's suit and orders him to sit with the body all night. Before the funeral, she confesses the truth to Thea, who responds: "That's murder. Arlo used you like a weapon" (245). Artie is torn between Thea's clarity and her instinct to preserve her bond with her twin.

At Wednesday's funeral, Lavinia takes the pulpit and delivers a searing denunciation, pointing at Arlo: "You have inherited your father's heedlessness...I am casting you out" (258). Arlo reaches for Artie's hand as he flees, but she stays to say goodbye to Ryan at the casket. Outside, Vera seizes June's hand and accuses the Briscoes of collective guilt. Cole, who attended despite June's objections, pries Vera's fingers free.

That night, June sleeps with Cole. The next morning, March finds his mother outside Cole's trailer doctoring a chicken. She greets him with a genuine smile and tells him his return is not the cause of the family's troubles and that staying with Peter may have kept her from being a proper mother. She plans to separate from Peter.

Arlo, waking in a Houston motel, decides to tell the truth. With Peter and a lawyer, he goes to the Sheriff's Department and signs a statement admitting his lie and reckless dare. He will plead no contest to deadly contact and accept jail time; in exchange, no charges are filed against Artie. When Artie receives the news, she stands slightly closer to her brother in a small, ambiguous gesture.

Hap visits Vera with a handmade pendant evoking Key West, a place she loves, and proposes a six-month separation in adjacent apartments there, giving him a chance to change away from his family's influence. Vera agrees to consider it, and Hap catches a suppressed smile as she leaves.

June tells Peter she needs to move out. From the balcony, they watch March and Hap walking together below, cautiously rebuilding. Peter acknowledges that being family "just means we don't have the safety of fences between us" (318). That evening, Arlo plays at the local bar, checking the door for Artie, who does not come. She is home alone, finding a partial photo of Ryan on her phone, just his profile beside a rabbit from the day they met. She runs her thumb down his face, then walks outside into the dark, finding what small comfort she can in the sounds of frogs and cicadas.