The novel is set in the aftermath of the war in El Salvador (1980-1992), a war in which the two Flores brothers were arrested and savagely tortured both physically and mentally, but a war that they ultimately survived. On a heat-soaked morning in the wild countryside of El Salvador, the Flores brothers encounter something -- part vision, part phantasm, part shuddering echo of their past -- that almost frightens them out of their wits. What follows is a magical, dream-like and picaresque journey across El Salvador, as the Flores brothers try to find what will set them free from the thing that they have witnessed and from the tragedies of their past.