A young, unnamed man, reeling from his addiction to heroin and alcohol, spirals through these interlinked stories of grief and transcendence, of rock bottom and redemption, of getting lost and found and lost again. In the course of his adventures, he meets an assortment of people, who seem as alienated and confused as he; sinners, misfits, the lost, the damned, the desperate and the forgotten. Out of their bleak, seemingly random lives, Denis Johnson creates modern-day parables of a harsh and devastating beauty.