Modern ranch living - Mark Poirier

It's a summer hotter than hell in Tucson, Arizona, and weird things are afoot in the crumbling desert community of Rancho Sin Vacas (Ranch Without Cattle). Sixteen-year-old Kendra obsessively hones her body into a perfectly muscled machine, even as she struggles to master a mounting violent streak. Her brother Thomas slips into a misanthropic daze while cultivating a bizarre little obsession of his own under the front porch. Another local, Merv, stuck in a rut and going nowhere fast at thirty, reaches his wit's end over his insomniac mother, whose night-time antics begin to wreak havoc on his life.

When a strung-out teenager disappears from the Rancho, and rumours of murder surface, these discontented misfits find themselves in an unlikely alliance that will alter the course of one long, sun-baked summer - and perhaps their lives.