Thomas Andrews, an English college professor in Boston, thinks his life is in order. Then terrorists attack America and his life falls to pieces. First he joins the mass exodus out of Boston as everyone tries to escape the terror, then he runs for his life after he is implicated in the attacks. Knowing his life is over, he drives across the country trying to survive and avoid capture. He finds himself in a small town in North Dakota where he starts a new, completely different life as a busboy in a run-down bar and as the unwilling buffer between the bar's owners. Ange, the bar owner, is a brassy blonde who takes him in and shows him a life he never knew existed. His attempts to settle into his new life are constantly challenged by the presence of Chuck, Ange's jealous boyfriend. Chuck is a wreck of a man who used to be the lead singer of a popular alternative band and is on the run himself. He and Ange have spent years trying to hide his criminal past and find their lives even more complicated by Thomas' arrival.