From the moment sixteen-year-old Billy steps off the train in Tucson, he knows this will be a summer unlike any he’s seen in small-town Bradleyville, Missouri. For starters, he’s staying with his cool gay uncle, who has managed to get his nephew a job at the racetrack, caring for horses. Still, Billy doesn’t expect the horse-racing world to be quite as rough and tumble as this—toiling side by side with a macho survivalist and falling hard for the feisty, romance-shy “exercise girl” Cara Mae.