In landlocked Gainesville, Florida, in the hot, fraught summer of 1999, a college dropout named David sleepwalks through his life?a dull haze of office work and Internet porn?until a run-in with a lost friend jolts him from his torpor. He is drawn into the vibrant but grimy world of Fishgut, a rundown house where a loose collective of anarchists, burnouts, and libertines practice utopia outside society and the law. Some even see their lifestyle as a spiritual calling. They watch for the return of a mysterious hobo who will?they hope?transform their punk oasis into the Bethlehem of a zealous, strange new creed.

In his dark and mesmerizing debut novel, Justin Taylor ("a master of the modern snapshot"?Los Angeles Times) explores the borders between religion and politics, faith and fanaticism, desire and need?and what happens when those borders are breached.