Banks is a liar.
Banks compulsively rewrites his life and past as though it were a text to be interpreted in the classroom, telling wild stories to anyone he thinks he can fool. But when he's called home to a small town in Tennessee for his mother's funeral, he's forced to confront his past in a place where postmodern indeterminism doesn't cut much ice. Banks, a diabetic, becomes careless in his grief, swinging between woozy sugar fugues and insulin shock. And the truth about his long-widowed mother becomes more complicated than he's imagined when he finds a secret stash of condoms in her purse. While looking into that discovery, Banks links up with Ann Louise Wilson, an old acquaintance turned police detective.