Willard is a tormented veteran of the carnage in the South Pacific who can´t save his beautiful wife, Charlotte, from a slow death by cancer no matter how much sacrificial blood he pours on his ´prayer log´. Carl and Sandy Henderson, a husband-and-wife team of serial killers, trawl America´s highways searching for suitable models to photograph and exterminate. The spider-handling preacher Roy and his crippled virtuoso-guitar-playing sidekick are running from the law. And caught in the middle of all this is Arvin, Willard and Charlotte´s orphaned son, who grows up to be a good but also violent man in his own right...