Spring is late, and the warm rains of June create a flood that threatens all the small towns and farms in its path. The dikes need to be shored up, and the situation is so desperate that prison inmates are added to the work gangs. Then the dike brakes and everyone is swept in a deluge downstream. One of those men is Donavan, the murderer, and an expert swimmer; another is Peebles, the thief, who probably would have drowned if Donavan hadn't saved him.

In their path is Elizabeth, a rich man's daughter stranded by the flood, who is about to learn a lot more about life than she could have ever imagined. In the next 24 hours she will have to fend off the unsavory advances of Peebles while putting faith in a man found guilty of killing another human being. Each of them is caught up in something bigger-and now they are being tested as they have never been before.