In the summer of 1927, two strangers enter the world of eighteen-year-old Mariana Harris. One is a wandering friar claiming to have no name. The other is a corpse. When the dead man vanishes, leaving behind only bloodstained stones and a few tracks in the bush near Halfwell Station, the police are called to investigate. In the uneasy company of the powerfully moustachioed Detective Sergeant Arnold Parkes and a local tracker named Cooper, Mariana and the friar join the search for the missing corpse-a quest that will take them from the goldfields to the city, and uncover secrets that have lain hidden for decades.