Buck Webster is an aging beekeeper, volunteer firefighter and Emergency Medical Responder in the Oregon Coast Mountains. He is trying to finish his honey harvest when his department is called out for a crash on a cliff the truck drivers call "Dead Dog." Buck arrives in time to hear a dying man's last words. The cryptic comments send Buck on a search for a killer, deep into some of the wildest country in the Pacific Northwest timber lands. Buck's misspent youth and checkered past has left him uniquely suited for the quest he undertakes. He finds more pleasure, pain, and pure evil than he ever imagined could exist in sleepy Chepenefa County.