A Workingman's Cemetery unearths the contents of a small bone orchard in 41 short, fictional biographies. The histories of the interred, from a Hunter coalmining village now gone, are connected by the spectacularly unkempt life of Ronald Borthwick, the village gravedigger, who, over time, buried almost everyone he knew until, betrayed by a best mate in a village where solidarity is crucial, he was driven finally, murder-suicide. In the cemetery.