It’s late autumn in the early sixties in a southern Manitoba valley, where Rose Martens struggles with the aftermath of a terrible fire that has left her two sons, Jake and Isaac Martens, horribly disfigured. The boys have gone to live in an abandoned house they’ve named Bachelor’s Paradise, where they spend all their time watching American network television. Their father Clarence works day and night in his blacksmith shop, producing bizarre metallic creations no one can make any sense of. Martha Wiebe returns to the stifling conformity of the valley — after inadvertently capturing the horror of the Kennedy assassination on camera — to discover that her brother Abe, a preacher, has abandoned his congregation to devote himself to the construction of “The Ark”, a massive and mysterious edifice whose purpose he will not divulge. When the first major snowstorm of the year roars into the valley, it unleashes a chain of events the valley may never recover from.