The novel primarily follows the story of a white teenager and an African-American man on their journey down the devastated
Mississippi River. Although the focus of the novel is the journey of the two main characters, there are dozens of side-stories and parallel plot lines throughout the book. Some of which are: a preacher who leads his flock to believe that the end has come, a Sheriff (and
KKK member) who begins a program of
genocide against the people left homeless by the disaster, a technician struggling to keep a Louisiana nuclear power plant from melting down, and an
Army Corps of Engineers commander trying to curtail the devastation wrought by the failure of the
levee system. The author also plays on actual historical events and personalities such as
Huey Long, the uprising at the
Sobibor concentration camp, and the
Jonestown incident. ==References==