A young Southerner, Quentin Breed, desperately flees from a Vietnam draft notice and the FBI, hoping to find refuge with a little-known relative, a family outcast, in a tiny Virginia town with the strange name of Mothers of Dane. A stunning turn of events, however, leads him into the bizarre world of the oddly-spelled GRO. ANd GLUF, a country store near the town where Quentin, broke and using an alias, must take a temporary job to fund a new plan for escape.

When crime savagely strikes the GRO. ANd GLUF, though, Quentin surprises even himself by running headlong into harm's way,...