Marooned at a backwater college and hungry for more, Athletic Director Scott Darrow plots his ascent to a better job at a better school.

He has the talent, charm and Machiavellian nerve to go far, but when he hires a famous coach to run his basketball program, the coach proves to be unstable and possibly insane.

Now, to escape professional oblivion, Darrow must maneuver and manipulate this coach, and manage the town's intensifying suspicions. No measure is too drastic. No tactic too cruel. But complicating Darrow's work is his own unsettled history, and in wrestling with this history, Darrow begins to understand his frail coach with jarring personal clarity.

Perhaps the two men aren't as dissimilar as they'd seemed. And perhaps Darrow's future-even if it's triumphant-will mean not banishing his ghosts, but living forever in their company.