A man returns from San Francisco to the small town where he grew up, and tries to convince his childhood friend to go back to San Francisco with him after a terrible turn of events.
While not at all unpredictable, this is a good entry in the genre of failed returns to small town life. The women are barely characters, really just plot devices, but the narrator and Byron are fleshed out and their relationship is much more likely the “tragic event” than the accident at the sand bar.