Randall Oliver is a lawyer semi-retired from a Dallas practice now living in the rural Louisiana community where he grew up. His only active client is his former father-in-law dying of cancer but wanting to drill his last wildcat oil well in an environmentally sensitive Louisiana swamp. Life is peaceful in the little town of Bogalusa, Louisiana, and that suits Randall Oliver just fine. A semi-retired attorney, he keeps his legal skills sharp mostly by helping his family and childhood friends with their legal matters, but is happy to take on one final project for his former father-in-law, dying oil wildcatter Buck Townsend. It's hardly the routine affair he expected. Within weeks, Randall finds himself neck-deep in a quagmire of environmental politics. His opponents, including his own brother James, are more than willing to use dirty pool and strong-arm tactics in an attempt to halt the drilling in the Yellow Dog Prospect near Bogalusa. It's nothing Randall hasn't encountered before, so he forges on in the face of both negative political ads and physical threats. He's made a promise to Buck, and refuses to bow down to the bullying of their adversaries...though his resolve is seriously tested when eco-terrorists strike the project, and his fiancee, Deena, is attacked by armed gunmen. Driven by a relentless determination to protect Deena and complete this final project for his dying friend, Randall pushes onward through a morass of political cupidity, family crises, and repeated attacks to pick apart the tangled threads of a conspiracy seemingly designed to destroy everything he loves. What he discovers isn't quite what he expected...and it almost gets him killed."