Despite promises to his pregnant wife and dead mother never to follow in the footsteps of his father, Calvin Gaddy takes a job at Coventry Prison in the North Carolina Piedmont. He soon finds himself snared in the literal prison of Coventry—and in a cell of his own making. He watches as his father, Mac, a retired iron-willed, old-school chain gang guard, descends into madness. And when Calvin unwittingly traffics in contraband on the prison yard, he begins to realize that the prison is on the verge of disintegration from within.

His dilemma is further complicated by his wife's harrowing pregnancy, and his unavoidable relationship with Pitch, a self-styled conjure man, who Calvin is repelled by and drawn to at the same time. When Pitch attempts to put a spell on Calvin, it results in a chain of murderous, surreal events that propel Calvin, his entire family, and the prison itself toward inevitable conflagration.

At every turn, Calvin is faced with sacrificing everything he believes in. While he desperately desires to do the right thing, he finds himself seduced again and again by the power that his position on the yard affords him and the diabolical power of the prison itself.

He realizes, over the course of the novel, that in the hellish world of prison, there is no middle ground.

Bathanti's prose is as blade-sharp as a prison shank—and it dances deftly between two worlds; one of brutal reality and another of inexplicable hauntings.