Life has been good to Senator Jack E. Wilson, a God-fearing Republican from North Carolina. The President's aide, Party spokesman and deputy-leader of the Senate, things have been going pretty well for Jack. With a good friend in the Health Secretary, Senator Finley; two trusted lieutenants in Jim and Frank, and a beautiful personal assistant in Monique, little seems likely to trouble his road towards becoming House Leader of the Senate.
Then, in apparent spite of his late wife Grace who died of lung cancer, the trade and industry Senator Anello decides to build a giant tobacco plant in his home town of Raleigh. Jack vehemently opposes the location of what at first sight appears to be just another irrational whim of big industry, but soon finds that the stakes are a lot higher than they at first appeared.
A trail of murder and malice follows a bitter conflict between the rival camps. Eventually something has to give, somebody has to betray, and someone has to lose in this deadly game whose winner stands to gain a lot more than just a forest in North Carolina.