Reding describes the view of the flyover states as he travels from Chicago to Los Angeles by airplane. He then describes Oelwein, Iowa, which appears to be a normal small town. However, at night the town smells of meth labs. Examining the partition “between the farmer and tweaker” (6) and how it came to exist is the purpose for the book.

The author arrives in Iowa in 2005 after six years observing the rise of meth in rural America. In 1999, he first hears of meth while in Gooding, Idaho, a small town with a massive meth problem. By 2004, meth is a major fixture in St. Louis, near his childhood home of Greenville.

In Oelwein, at a bar called Ethan’s Place, Reding meets two men he calls Sean and James. Described as a skinhead, Sean was recently released from prison. James is a Black man who served with an Army Airborne division. Despite their ideological and racial differences, the two men play pool together. They have an aspect of their history in common: they have both been controlled by the military and prison, respectively, which gives them a conversational starting point.