Combat veteran John Puller, now working as an investigator for the Army's Criminal Investigative Division, tries to solve the murder of an Army man and his Pentagon contractor wife in their isolated rural home.

Set in the rich farmland of California's Salinas Valley, this sprawling and often brutal novel follows the intertwined destinies of two families-the Trasks and the Hamiltons-whose generations helplessly reenact the fall of Adam and Eve and the poisonous rivalry of Cain and Abel.