Strattford County Yarn

When Stacey “Shakespeare” Williams returns to his family’s farm to bury his dead cat, he finds his prematurely-senile father living in squalor. There’s no money, the land is fallow, and what the hell happened to the old man’s beloved Cessna airplane? With no job and no prospects, Shakespeare becomes caretaker to his father and the farm. Drawn by desperation to reunite with a misfit crew of old classmates—losers, same as he—and motivated by boredom as much as by revenge, Shakespeare hatches a half-serious plot to rob the town bank.

It’s 1975, and cowboy Johnny Riles is a headcase. He’s depressed, he’s drunk, and he’s lonesome as hell. Left by his family to care for the ranch on his own, Johnny manages to keep the cattle alive while struggling to justify his own existence. Embittered by the success of his younger brother, Kitch, a professional basketball player, it is only thanks to a salt-dry sense of humor and a plentiful supply of whiskey that Johnny keeps himself aboveground.

Before the clocks stopped, Narwhal Slotterfield was an ordinary basketball referee. He blew his whistle. He stretched the rules. He even had a girlfriend. But then the clock thing happened. Now it’s 7:23 p.m., Narwhal’s in a diner in the middle of the Great Plains, and now is all he’s got.