"When Laurence Waters arrives at his new post at a deserted rural hospital, staff physician Frank Eloff is instantly suspicious. Laurence is young, optimistic, and full of big ideas - everything Frank, hardened and embittered by years of irrelevancy and disappointment in the "bush," is not. Frank watches with a mixture of bemusement and irritation a Laurence sets about trying to bring the hospital and its diffident staff back to life." "The whole town is beset with new arrivals and the return of old faces. Frank reestablishes a secret romantic liaison with a local woman, one that will have unexpected consequences for him, for her, and even for Laurence. The Brigadier, an African who shaped himself into a local dictator during apartheid days, is rumored to be back in town, and active in cross-border smuggling. A group of soldiers has moved in to track him, and to close the borders, led by a man from Frank's own dark past. Laurence sees only possibilities - but in a world where the past is demanding restitution from the present, his ill-starred idealism cannot last. When the final denouement comes, who will make the cynical choice, and who the moral one?"--Jacket.