The story of Jim Worth, an expat British police officer starting a new life with his family as police chief in Little Big Bear, an idyllic town near the Rocky Mountains. When his small town is overrun by migrant workers from a massive new oil refinery – the wave of drugs, prostitution and organised crime that follows them threatens to sweep away everything in its wake.

Set in a small Michigan town where the only industry remaining are federal, state, and private prisons, the story follows the McClusky family, the power brokers between the police, criminals, inmates, prison guards and politicians, in a city completely dependent on prisons and the prisoners they contain.