The sleepy town of Tired Sailor is nudged awake when a black child arrives, forcing the people to accept the child alongside memories of their own dark past. Rooster Clark, mad Aboriginal electrician, lives in the hidden reaches of the swamp and the more obscure reaches of his own brain, a swamp savant capable of anything—as long as he survives his own wiring. And Jim Fox returns from the Papuan Independence war to the land of his birth. Will Tired Sailor ever really wake up?