After a mental breakdown costs him his job in New York, a young man returns to Cape Town with his husband, Adrian. Its 2018. The drought is severe, and their homecoming is tinged with failure and reverse culture shock. But there is hope, too. They want to start a family by adopting a child.

As the adoption gets underway, the narrator is forced to confront events from his own childhood he would rather avoid, and question whether he is capable of love and fatherhood. His life becomes increasingly enmeshed with that of his house cleaner, Sibs, and her toddler, Buhle. His marriage begins to unravel and violence threatens to upend their new beginning. Can he help those he cares about while finding his own path to healing?