In this story of male friendship, Fearnley reproduces the cadences and rhythms of rural life and offers insight into a provincial male world seldom explored in recent New Zealand fiction. Best friends Warwick and Dean live in rural Southland. Dean, a farmer, is single and lonely – if only he’d admit it to himself. Warwick is caught between his love for a place and his love for Sabine and Ecki, his estranged wife and child now living in Germany. Dean observes Warwick’s struggle but has problems of his own: a domineering father he neither loves nor respects, and on-going feelings of guilt and grief for his brother. Suddenly, Sabine and Ecki return to New Zealand, bringing the past with them to threaten the fragile worlds Warwick and Dean have created for themselves.