In 1920, a young county attorney takes on the Ku Klux Klan in Oklahoma. The novel tells the story of the four year battle that Claude Hendon, a county attorney in Pottawatomie County Oklahoma, wages to bring down the local Klan Grand Cyclops and his five whipping teams who are terrorizing the population of the county. In the battle, Claude is threatened, beaten, and shot at. He is charged and tried for bribery and drunkeness by the state attorney general, a Klan supporter, in an effort to oust Claude from office. At the same time, Claude's anti-Klan ally, the governor of Oklahoma, is impeached and ousted from office by a Klan dominated legislature. Claude survives his trial and is acquitted. He goes on to defeat the local Klan by jailing its leaders and many members of the whipping teams. He breaks the Klan. It will never be as powerful again.