This is the story of a friendship that begins in 1987, when the narrator travels to work at a university in a Midwestern city in the United States and meets Rodney Fock, his office colleague, a Vietnam veteran, cantankerous and unsociable, yet incredibly clear-headed, though unconfessably tormented by his past.

The book is, furthermore, the story of an incredible experience in the unfathomable abyss of evil and guilt, which the narrator himself will understand years later, in a flash, when he encounters the success and the gradual corruption that it entails.

Then, Rodney's undefined personality and the harrowing story of him will mark him forever, revealing to him the secrets of the human condition.