Nearly two decades after he made the winning shot in the state championship basketball game, Nicholas "Duke" Ducheski remains much adored and the focal point of community pride. Now approaching 40, Duke no longer wants to be defined solely by something he did when he was 18. So he decides to parlay his local popularity into a successful restaurant. One day, "Little Tony" DeMarco, his brother-in-law and a known mob enforcer, comes into the restaurant and murders Duke's oldest friend. DeMarco thinks he's untouchable, but Duke discovers a way to take him down, along with his mob superiors. To do so, however, means sacrificing his treasured identity as the town legend. And if he follows through, what will remain of his life?

After his unspectacular professional baseball career ends with a knee injury in Toledo, Ohio, Johnny Earl gets busted for selling cocaine. After serving seven years in prison, all he wants to do is return to his hometown of Steubenville, retrieve the drug money he stashed before he went to jail, and start a new life where no one has ever heard of Johnny Earl. However, before he can leave town with his money, Johnny is picked up for questioning in the murder of Rayce Daubner, the FBI informant who had set him up on drug charges in the first place. Then his former prison cellmate shows up --- a white supremacist who wants the drug money to help fund an Aryan nation in the wilds of Idaho.

Amanda Baron died in a boating accident on the Ohio River in 1953. Or did she? While it was generally accepted that she had lost her life when a coal barge rammed the pleasure boat she was sharing with her lover, her body was never found. Travis Baron was an infant when his mother disappeared. After the accident and the subsequent publicity, Travis’ father scoured the house of all evidence that Amanda Baron had ever lived, and her name was never to be uttered around him. Now in high school, Travis yearns to know more about her. With the help of his best friend, Mitch Malone, Travis begins a search for the truth about the mother he never knew.