What if you had to spend one year face-to-face with the biggest mistake of your life? Daniel Rhodes and Wilson Morrow meet in a chance encounter in a big city, both men looking for comfort with a stranger. The night of anonymous fun becomes a nightmare when the two meet again in the small town of Chewelah, thrown into a situation that leaves them no choice but to work together. They both know that with a single word, Daniel could ruin Will's whole career. They want to hate each other for what they are and the dishonest way they met. But as they're forced to work together, Daniel finds that Will is changing the way he views himself, literature, and the future before him. In the gregarious and hot-tempered Daniel, Will finds someone he cannot help but care about - but he knows that the best thing he can do for Daniel Rhodes is to leave him alone. Try as they might, something bigger than themselves always pushes the two of them together. For the first time in either man's life, they begin to build rather than repair, to forge their own future instead of treading in a wake, and to create something more important than simple survival in the aftermath of their encounter.