Hidden within the deep woods of rural Alabama, along the forgotten southern course of the Black Warrior River, lies an unseen world feared for centuries by the residents of the tiny town of Carlsdale.

Only one person has ever survived a visit to this place long enough to tell about it. His name is Jack Kenney.

Thirteen years old at the time of the event, Jack and his family were forced to flee Carlsdale and head north to the larger city of Tuscaloosa. The menace from their former home left them in peace for nearly eight years. But after the brutal murder of a noted archaeologist and teacher at the University of Alabama, everything changed.

Jack and his older brother, Jeremy, attend the University and are close friends of the late professor. Within days of his death, they are abducted by the FBI, and held against their will in a secret holding facility near Manassas, Virginia.

Frustrated by the brothers' seeming refusal to cooperate, the agency's interrogations become increasingly violent, until Jack gains a welcome reprieve when Special Agent Peter McNamee arrives from the FBI's Richmond office. He befriends Jack and gains his trust, drawing upon a similar supernatural event from his own youth.

Willing, finally, to talk after so many years spent in sworn silence, Jack leads Peter on an extraordinary roller-coaster ride involving a mystical and deadly realm located in America's Deep South....