The reader is introduced to the town of Empire Falls, Maine, and the family whose wealth and industries—the textile mill and the shirt factory—built it. Charles Beaumont Whiting has returned from his youthful ventures abroad in Mexico, laying the foundation for his hacienda-style house on the other side of the river from the main Whiting mansion in town. At first, this seems like a smart move: The townspeople who toil during 14-hour days at the Whiting factories are less amenable to living amidst the family’s wealth. C. B., as he comes to be known, inherits a disgruntled workforce, thwarted in their attempts to unionize, and a declining industry. He muses often on his misbegotten youth and his dreams of being a poet or a painter.

C. B. soon discovers that trash from the Knox River ends up pooling near the foundations of his new home. Later, after finding the decaying corpse of a shot moose on his land, he decides that he must have “an enemy” (9); furthermore, this enemy must be God, who determined the course of the river. Instead of accepting the natural order of things, Whiting decides to blast the river into a new course, so that the detritus of other people’s lives will not wash upon his land.