Frank Winter has a gift. He can soothe and handle damn near anything on four legs. Bt his future career as a racetrack equine veteranarian is destroyed with one vicious kick to the head. Now, the men who financed his education want their investment back and Frank becomes the guy to get his hands dirty when a horse in worth more dead than alive. But when a job goes bad and a horse dies on national television, Frank is taken to a rundown roadside zoo where the animals aren't just hungry. They're slowly starving. And Frank is on the menu.

After finding refuge in an isolated small town rued with near absolute power by Horace Strum, Frank sees a chance to make some quick cash. Sturm's got his problems, though. There's a tumor in his head the size of a golf ball and his thirteen-year-old son has brought nothing but embarrassment and shame to the family name.

Under a brutal summer sun, Frank organizes a series of exotic animal hunts through the ranches and backyards of Whitwood, hoping to end the animals' starvation quickly and painlessly. But he underestimates the deadness lurking under the surface of the town. Nor does he truly understand the depth of hatred in the decades old feud between Strum and the Glouck family. And he definitely doesn't anticipate falling for nineteen-year-old Annie Glouck.

While Whitewood crumbles to into a ghost town full of bones, blood, and gunpowder, vicious predators and hunters with itchy trigger fingers stalk the empty streets. It's survival of the fittest as the hunts escalate into death matches between the exotic animals and Frank must decide where he stands on the fine line between predator and prey.