This remarkable novel reveals the strong bond of love between friends and the dark pervasiveness of addiction. As Diana Kooper runs from a car crash, scarcely looking back, she leaves her best friend, Nicole, slumped and bloody in the damaged vehicle. After hitching a ride to a remote community, Diana takes a job as a kitchen hand at Bob's, an isolated truck stop. At first she thinks she can predict the sort of rhythm her life will follow in this dusty, diesel-driven, lonely stop, but soon a series of unsettling events disturb her seemingly ordered existence--a dog is brutally stabbed to death and left as a warning beside one of the gas pumps, and when Bob disappears under suspicious circumstances, Diana is left to look after the roadhouse kitchen on her own. As everyday life becomes increasingly challenging, Diana is forced to confront her haunting past in order to deal with her present predicament.