Plot
The Devil All the Time follows the events and fates of various characters who all carry their own secrets from the past. As the novel progresses the lives of these people converge in unexpected ways.
In the prologue, a young boy named Arvin sits on an oak log with his father, Willard, for his obsessive evening prayer routine. Arvin and Willard overhear a pair of hunters discussing Willard’s wife, Charlotte, in a lewd manner, and Arvin is disappointed that his father does not react. However, later that day, Willard takes Arvin with him to track down the men, and beats one of them to near-death, to Arvin’s awe.
The rest of the book is divided into seven parts. Part One, "Sacrifice," begins in 1945, before the prologue. Willard has just been discharged from combat duty after the end of World War II and travels home to Coal Creek, West Virginia. He recalls the horrifying things he saw during the war, in particular a soldier who was skinned and crucified; Willard shoots the man as an act of mercy, and later kills the Japanese soldiers responsible. At the Wooden Spoon Diner in Meade, Ohio, he meets and instantly falls in love with a beautiful waitress, Charlotte Willoughby. At home, he is met by his mother, Emma, and her brother, his Uncle Earskell. Emma worries about Willard’s interest in Charlotte, as she prayed to God for his safe return and offered in exchange that Willard would marry pious local woman Helen Hatton.
Willard and Emma attend a local service by preacher cousins Roy and Theodore, and everyone in the church is scared away when Roy dumps a bin full of spiders on his own head as a stunt, except for Helen. Helen later marries Roy and they have a daughter named Lenora. When Roy is bitten by a spider and loses faith, jealous Theodore eggs him on, claiming that he can raise living beings from the dead. They plot to murder Helen, stabbing her with a screwdriver, but fail to revive her. They flee town, leaving Lenora with Emma.
Meanwhile, Willard marries Charlotte and they raise Arvin in Meade before moving to a rented house in Knockemstiff. When Charlotte is diagnosed with cancer, Willard becomes obsessed with prayer and he begins offering sacrifices of animals and blood at the prayer log. As Charlotte’s condition worsens, he murders their landlord Henry Dunlap, and offers his blood in sacrifice. When Charlotte dies nonetheless, Willard slits his own throat at the log, and Arvin finds his body. He goes to the local storekeeper, Hank, who calls Sheriff Bodecker. Bodecker is horrified by the bloodbath of sacrifices at the prayer log.
In Part 2, "On the Hunt," the reader is introduced to Carl and Sandy Henderson, a pair of murderous lowlifes living in Meade, who pick up male hitchhikers, lure them into sex with Sandy, and brutally kill them. Carl, an unemployed photographer, takes personal pleasure in staging explicit photographs of the rape and murders, and calls the victims “models”. They remain undetected, and embark on annual summer road trips to look for more victims. Sandy's brother, Sheriff Bodecker, dislikes Carl and resents Sandy’s blatant prostitution at the bar where she works, but remains oblivious of their crimes while engaging in corruption schemes of his own.
In Part 3, "Orphans and Ghosts," Arvin moves in with Emma, his grandmother, and grows protective of Lenora. On Arvin’s fifteenth birthday, Uncle Earskell gifts him his father's gun, a German Luger from his WWII service. When Lenora is bullied at school, Arvin comes to her defense by tracking down each of the bullies at a later date and brutally beating them. Roy and Theodore travel with a circus freak show, performing an act where Roy preaches and eats live insects, but they are kicked out when Theodore is caught molesting a young boy.
Part 4, "Winter," focuses largely on Carl and Sandy's continued murderous exploits. Carl reflects on their early marriage, when they moved to California to pursue Carl’s photography. Carl convinces Sandy to participate in a porn production, but it goes badly wrong, with Sally assaulted and Carl cheated out of the money. On their way back from California, they pick up their first hitchhiker and kill him for his money, taking their first set of pictures. In the present, Carl begins frequenting a new bar and flirting with the young waitress, pretending to be a real photographer. He buys Sandy a gun of her own, but becomes nervous when she takes to it, and eventually replaces her bullets with blanks.
In Part 5, "Preacher," the Knockemstiff church replaces their dying old reverend with his nephew, Pastor Teagardin, who lives with his much younger wife, Cynthia. Teagardin is revealed to be a habitual predator, who is obsessed with taking teen girls’ virginities. Teagardin successfully seduces Lenora, and gets her pregnant. When Lenora confronts Teagardin, he denies his part in it and coldly rejects her, having already moved on to other girls. Lenora commits suicide. Arvin puts together what happened, shoots Teagardin dead, and flees Coal Creek. Meanwhile, Roy returns from work one day to find Theodore dead, and decides to return to Ohio to look for Lenora.
In Part 6, "Serpents," Carl and Sandy embark on their newest road trip, picking up and murdering Roy amongst others. One planned victim escapes, causing Carl to obsess over completing another kill before the trip is over. Arvin decides to hitchhike back to Meade and Knockemstiff to visit where his parents met and raised him.
In Part 7, “Ohio”, Carl and Sandy pick up Arvin, but Arvin shoots and kills Carl by surprise, and then kills Sandy when her gun only shot blanks. Sheriff Bodecker pursues Arvin to the prayer log in Knockemstiff, having discovered Carl’s pictures and intending to kill Arvin to cover up his sister’s crimes in self-preservation. Arvin outsmarts and kills Bodecker, leaving one of the incriminating photos on his body. He sets off on the road again, intending to hitchhike.
