Thirty year old Richard Kerm knew that he wanted to be an investigative journalist ever since he was a teenager, he dropping out of school at age sixteen to work at The Eagle - the local newspaper edited by Burt Delfino - in his hometown of Glenville, population 5,100. He left the paper, Glenville, and his fiancée, Jackie Bell, the mayor's daughter, at nineteen, he who vowed to Jackie that he would be back after his first raise so that they could get married, his return and thus the marriage which never happened, with not a word to her. Instead, Richard moved from one medium sized newspaper to another, each job lasting on average one year, he continually running away largely out of dissatisfaction. An incident with his current job at the Tulsa Standard Bearer is the straw that breaks the proverbial camel's back with this career. Unsure exactly why, he feels compelled to return to Glenville for the first time since he left eleven years ago. He finds that the town has not changed at all