Recently paroled, heroic but rootless, Neal Carver's dream road trip goes spectacularly wrong when he wins a poker game and his prized motorcycle is stolen by a murderous couple. Hellbent to regain it, he's struck by lightning while crossing the badlands. After recovering, he's now unexpectedly burdened with Jed, an autistic boy with a strange connection to electricity. With malign forces in pursuit, Neal and Jed arrive at the ranch of Simone, a solitary young woman obsessed with completing a monumental piece of land art, even at the expense of her own life. Set against a rugged landscape and the thunderstorms of late summer, these three outsiders will unite for survival, and come to understand through a boy who sees what others cannot, how the unseen current that runs through the world has wired their lives together.