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.