Ranchers, Richard and Seth Barrett, are devoted to running the family ranch on Nebraska's Platte River. It is their intent to keep doing so the rest of their lives; however, the terms of their mother's will requires them to travel by horse and canoe along the Platte River, to understand why their maternal grandfather homesteaded the ranch three generations earlier. From the grave, she commands them to observe industrial farming's harm to the land, air, and water. A 90-old bachelor farmer, with a game plan of his own, butts in and threatens to disrupt and delay the will's mandatory expedition. Using a gullible hometown sheriff and a corrupt local politician, a conniving, wealthy neighbor, seeking to seize the property, thwarts their struggle to keep their ranch and meet the will's terms. The Platte River, “A mile wide and an inch deep,” becomes its own character in this turbulent novel and lives up to its legend as being “too thick to drink and too thin to plow.”