In the small town of Friendship, Missouri, a tornado is approaching.  The chief of police, unable to sleep, makes a tour of inspection before dawn and finds a farmhouse already destroyed by a twister, a small forerunner of the greater whirlwind.  Crushed in the ruins is the body of a woman – not the farmer’s wife, but the wife of Friendship’s leading citizen.  The twister is not the killer – who is?  Family securities unravel, skeletons emerge from cupboards and the great tornado comes closer and closer.