Henry Mathews is a young lawyer in a large Chicago firm who's called back to his rural Kansas home town when Tyler Crandall, the town's richest citizen, and boss to much of the town's population, dies. The routine legal matter of handling the dead man's will has fallen to Mathews. But when the will leaves Crandall's assets to a homeless person called the Birdman, who sits day after day in the town's square, the situation becomes complicated. The gripping events that follow reveal a shocking string of secrets about the town's leading citizens, and Mathews is forced into sophisticated and highly dramatic manoeuvering to uncover the truth.