A stellar accident has thrown hundreds of small circular areas of East Texas far into the past. The displacement circles include such random spots as a roadside park, a Wal-Mart Superstore, the streets of a small town--and the death row section of the state prison. Individuals and groups gradually find one another while coping with an unknown wilderness--and the murderous convicts who are intent on enslaving everyone they can find--especially women and blacks. Eventually, the convict-led forces will battle for control of the new world against a random assortment of people led by an erstwhile physicist, who has found a new love in a woman formerly in the military. But in order to have a chance against the ruthless former convicts, she must pretend to be captured in order to create havoc behind the lines.