For years Nick Harris has been drifting, until the day he finds himself surrounded by red dirt and razor wire, staring at brownskinned men inside a detention centre. He’s no crusader, no bleeding-heart. It’s just a job. The strange thing is, the longer Nick looks, the more normal the detainees seem, and the crazier everything around them: the desert that is its own prison, the staff filled with resentment and disdain, the system that represents both salvation and damnation.

Nick is a future seeker-just like his ‘clients’. Only, he comes to realise they’re not just clients. They have personalities and share conversations, just like him. They joke and steal and cry and conspire. They are bad men, good men, dumb men, smart men-just men. Like him.