Leo Quinn is dead. Five years before his murder - tied to a barbed wire fence and shot through the heart on a back stretch of East Plains, Colorado dirt road, Leo came out of the closet in a speech at his own high school graduation. Full time math teacher and part time troublemaker Bonnie Pinkwater is drawn into the investigation when her phone number is found in Leo's pocket. Busybody that she is, she - and her principal Lloyd Whittaker - start turning over rocks. Unfortunately everywhere she looks people end up dead. First a rodeo clown who manages to get himself shot in a County Fair Port-A-Potty. Then at Leo's funeral the youth pastor, who just so happens to be Leo's former lover, is the victim of a sniper. Bonnie and Lloyd's investigation lead them to the target range of Leo's father, survivalist and former Marine Alf Rattlesnake Quinn, who has every reason to want revenge. Next on the list is Leo's former fiance, Seneca Webb, who now races quarter-horses. Also in the mix is Harold T Dobbs, the intolerant, bull-horn wielding, homosexual baiting pastor of the Saved by the Blood Pentecostal Tabernacle.
And don't forget Moses Witherspoon and Dwight Furby, empty-headed bigots who, it just so happens, were out joyriding on a certain section of dirt road on a certain Saturday night. Complicating Bonnie's investigation is Superintendent of Schools Xavier Divine - The Divine Pain in the Ass to those who know and love him - who has made it his life's ambition to keep one ageing math teacher out of the murder business.