In this darkly comic novel Nathan "Honey Boy" Kimbrough narrates a boy's search for a father and his mother's search for a "good man" in the mid-1970s. Honey Boy is a thirteen-year-old, four-letter-spouting, pistol-packing kid who is determined to learn something about the art of thieving swag from Kingdom County's own resident outlaw: Vaughn-a man so wicked that he is gone beyond the pale in his outrageous acts which include ransacking homes, stealing livestock, and intimidating his neighbors. Honey Boy watches as his mother Lorene is caught in a lover's triangle between Elston Vaughn and Elston's younger brother Sonny. Honey Boy tries to investigate things for himself by talking to folks who live in and around Fairmont like Roy who owns the local filling station and who suggests his father was the famous country singer Merle Haggard; a girl named Tempie does her best to keep him on the straight and narrow; a grandmother mistakes him for Jimmy Stewart; his best friend Riley who shows him how to drink swill and smoke dope. It's a fight between a boy's need to be good and pursue a life (as his great Aunt Oleta suggests) "chosen" to serve God and the life of a country outlaw. Ultimately, he falls under the tutelage of Vaughn, a natural born killer with the conscience of a sociopath. What follows is a conclusion so violent that even Vaughn might wonder if he hasn't done his job too well. Vigilantes in Fairmont surround the outlaw at his favorite tavern with deer rifles and revolvers drawn in a modern southern novel with an explosive climax.