Boonville is the story of John Gibson, a middle-class Floridian in his late 20s, on the verge of settling down (read: selling out), who uses the death of his eccentric grandmother as an excuse to have an early midlife crisis. He leaves his yuppie girlfriend and suffocating Miami life behind and moves to the small Northern California town of Boonville, into a cabin left to him by his late dope-growing grandmother who he remembers as "always smelling of gin and vaginal infection" and who passed her time making thousands of chainsaw carvings of squirrels.

Though it can be seen as a sort of Gen-X update on the classic American frontier-as-freedom theme, Anderson moves quickly to debunk that simple equation, highlighting the seduction and disappointment of the call to "Go west, young man." By Page 15, Anderson's protagonist has escaped his old life, only to wander aimlessly at the edge of the continent.