Just north of Lake Okeechobee in central Florida, Brad Dolan’s Ford goes bad. He pulls in for repairs, finds a sack for the night, then goes out for a drink and maybe some action with the dice... All routine enough, except that Brad Dolan is no ordinary guy, and the town is Carterville, no ordinary town.

It’s back-country: jukes fronting for gambling joints, bootleg whisky, sporting houses, cockfights—everything to take a man’s mind off his own troubles. Down here, Dolan finds out, a man can be rubber-hosed for buying a drink for a blonde who’s made a pass at him. A man named Bingo gives the orders, and a country-sheriff jumps.

Brad Dolan and Carterville don’t mix. Then Dolan hears an innocent man is being framed and is set for a lynching. Dolan’s tired of being pushed around—and seeing others being pushed around. He’s decided to do some pushing himself.

This noir thriller is about a guy named Brad Dolan, whose scars run deep. He thought he’d worn out his conscience at Guadalcanal, Bastogne, Inchon Reservoir, and in a New York apartment, where a restless model forgot she was his wife. Now he’s drifting deep in back country Florida, the part you never see on the travel posters. Down here everything belongs to a man named Ringo—the jukes, the sheriff, the hustlers. Now Ringo wants to own Dolan.

But Dolan comes high!