When Aaron Coleman hires Robert Lee Maggard to do a few odd jobs around his remote farm, he has no idea that the soft-spoken kid with the altar boy's face has a violent temper, a history of assault and a taste for crank — and that these volatile elements will explode three days later in a savage attack that will leave Aaron near death with a traumatic brain injury.
Six months later, on the eve of Maggard's trial, a hundred year flood engulfs the rural Missouri county. The chaos of the evacuation provides an opportunity for Maggard to engineer a violent escape from jail. Intent upon settling scores, he makes his way to the isolated farmhouse where Aaron — still trying to recover from the violent assault — and his daughter Ellie are stranded in the middle of a vast, flood-created lake.
In the ensuing death struggle, Aaron Coleman has to call on physical and emotional resources he thought were lost forever – his daughter's life depends on it.