Roseburg 1959

On August 7, 1959, at 1:14 a.m., a truckload of explosives blows up, gutting twelve square blocks of downtown Roseburg, Oregon. Ross Bagby stands at the edge the conflagration unaware that his so-called life has also just gone up in the flames. Ross s often humiliating marriage to the granddaughter of timber baron Jonah Armbruster is already an exercise of placid endurance. But when war hero Colonel Gordon Butler McKenzie, the figurehead director of the Armbruster charitable foundation, is with the wrong woman when the town explodes, Ross inherits complications he could never have imagined. A piece of shrapnel puts the Colonel in a coma and Ross, as his assistant, is appointed to replace him. Things immediately get messy when a belligerent board member accuses Ross of embezzling foundation funds. While Ross vents his denial of the theft, the woman the Colonel was with turns up pregnant. Things darken further when Ross receives anonymous letters decrying the sexual exploitation of vulnerable women by men in positions of influence. The desperate letters are pleas for Ross to act on their behalf, to make the abuse go away so the women can have their lives back. Along with his own infatuation with a young waitress, Ross faces layers of adversity such as he has never known. In the days ahead, he will discover what he's made of.