Quiet, reserved, painfully shy, Galton Flood arrives in the Guyanese township of Linden haunted by the death of his domineering mother. There he meets Gemma Burrowes, a vibrant young woman eager to escape the confines of her father’s boarding house. They marry and make a home in the anonymous sprawl of Georgetown, Galton’s native city, where Gemma starts to realize that there is something very wrong with this match, and with Galton himself.