Ottawan Bill Burridge is thrust into the nightmare of third-world terrorism. Burridge has moved his family to the South Pacific “island paradise” of Santa Irene on his first diplomatic posting. This is a country that has been dominated by a longtime dictator and is now threatened by an uprising of the revolutionary Kartouf. It is also a country where village boys routinely disappear and their bodies are found weeks later – and where a young diplomat from Canada suddenly finds himself shackled to a prison wall, in stifling heat and terror.