Plot

Bob Dollar is sent by his employer, the multinational

Multinational corporation

A multi national corporation or enterprise , is a corporation or an enterprise that manages production or delivers services in more than one country. It can also be referred to as an international corporation...

 "Global Pork Rind Corporation", to scout for locations for intensive hog farming

Intensive pig farming

Intensive piggeries are a type of factory farm ' specialized in the raising of domestic pigs up to slaughter weight...

 in the Texas Panhandle

Texas Panhandle

The Texas Panhandle is a region of the U.S. state of Texas consisting of the northernmost 26 counties in the state. The panhandle is a rectangular area bordered by New Mexico to the west and Oklahoma to the north and east...

. Dollar goes about the work of meeting local down-on-their-luck farmers to manipulate them into selling out. He bases his search in the fictional town of Woolybucket, named after the real tree species, Sideroxylon lanuginosum

Sideroxylon lanuginosum

Sideroxylon lanuginosum is a shrub or small tree of the family Sapotaceae. It is native to the Sun Belt and Midwest of the United States as well as Northeastern Mexico...

.

There he gets a job at Woolybucket's Old Dog restaurant, and moves into an old bunkhouse in local historian

Historian

A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all history in time. If the individual is...

 LaVon Fronk's ranch. The inhabitants of the town and the region's quirkiness and stubbornness work on the fundamentally decent Dollar. The ace in the hole of the title is Ace Crouch, who quietly leads Dollar to a "kind of small, quiet and personal redemption."