While working as a door-to-door encyclopedia salesman as a means of paying for his college tuition, seventeen-year-old Lemuel Altick witnesses the double assassination of two clients to whom he's about to close a sale. Surprised by Lemuel's presence, the assassin forces Lemuel to become complicit in the murder an event that instigates Lemuel's exposure to the previously hidden underworld surrounding him. Soon, Lemuel must contend with a boss involved in peddling crystal meth, a crooked cop who owns a hog farm, and a slick-talking assassin who launches into diatribes about the animal rights movement.