Summary

Note: each chapter in this novel is titled with the name of a character, who proceeds to narrate the chapter in first-person, before the next chapter changes to a new perspective. Each paragraph in the summary sections represents a new chapter, and thus a new switch in perspective.

Nora Guerraoi is living in Oakland, working as a substitute teacher and aspiring music composer, when she receives a telephone call saying that her father, Driss, has been killed as a pedestrian in an apparent hit-and-run accident. She drives overnight from Oakland to her childhood home in the Mojave Desert, and grieves with her mother, Maryam, in the family living room.

Jeremy Gorecki, a police officer in the Mojave Desert, suffers from insomnia, and goes to the gym at five in the morning after a sleepless night. At the gym he lifts weights with Bryan...