Jack Twist, a tractor salesman and a part-time rodeo star, is a closeted gay man in an unloving marriage to Lureen Newsome. Her father despises him, as does Jack. He wants to be free, to escape his life as a heterosexual and he wanted to live with his lover, a man named Ennis Del Mar, though the other man died before he could. Heartbroken, Jack sought comfort from a male rancher owner he had been seeing romantically in Texas, looking for comfort he couldn't find from Lureen.