Lyin' in the Green Grass

Tommy Johnson becomes part of a loving family when he’s lucky enough to be adopted out of the foster system. He’s the proverbial nerd who tends to fade into the background, and while he might wish Zack Jones, the jock who is football royalty in their little town, would want to date him, he knows that’s impossible, especially when Zack goes west to college and Tom goes south. Tom was never the sort of person to draw attention to himself; once he graduates, this makes him the perfect candidate for the Washington Bureau of Intelligence and Security. He enjoys his work until he’s almost killed, so he returns home to take the most boring job he can find.

Zack’s homelife was never ideal, so he found solace with a friend, until that friend abruptly disappeared from his life. To compensate, Zack becomes the epitome of jockdom, eventually earning a scholarship to a prestigious Midwestern college. An unlucky tackle on the football field leaves him with a badly broken femur, putting an end to his hopes of one day going pro. Rather than brood on the unfairness of life, he and some fellow jocks create a band and, after graduation begin to tour the country, becoming wildly popular as The Broken Legs. He enjoys his career until writer’s block puts a halt to his songwriting. And then one day, a package from home reminds him of his lost friend, and “Lyin’ in the Green Grass,” the song that results from this eureka moment, leads to a resurgence of his music.

The problem is the name he’s added to the song is Tommy Johnson, and it puts Tom into the crosshairs of a deadly adversary. All Tom knows is if he’s going to be miserable, so is Zack Jones, and he sets out to track down the illusive singer. What will happen when the two men finally meet after all these years? And what about the adversary who plans to make sure Tom Johnson winds up dead?