Raymond Hebbard, the son of the night man grows up an only child in a Victorian country town. His mother's love cannot protect him from his violent, alcoholic father. Raymond Hebbard is damaged goods. The boy is seen as an alien, a friendless misfit in the small community. The trauma Raymond Hebbard carries inside means that a fire is always ready to ignite in his chest and given the right circumstances it could explode and then beware those around him.
When his mother is close to death from a cancer, she finds Raymond an escape route and he moves to live with his Uncle Colin. Under his Uncle's protective wing Raymond begins to grow as a person and those around him can no longer see the son of the night man, just Raymond. Yet there is no sense of home for him, no sense of belonging. Eventually, circumstance and a new confidence see him challenge himself and he travels to the other side of the world, to a small village in the desert of Botswana.
Raymond has fallen out of the sky into the desert. He loves the warmth of the women in his compound and he grows to feel that this simple way of life is made for him. He finds a lover, he finds a friend. He discovers that no one can see his baggage, no one can see the son of the night man: neither in the school compound nor in the family compound. He is no longer the misfit, the alien.
But as his Uncle Colin liked to say, life is not always a picnic and the challenges thrown up by the presence of two other men in the village will severely test the son of the night man. The fire in his chest is still there and if ignited, he stands to lose all that life in the desert has offered him.