The story of Richard Rent, a volatile cop in 1930s Los Angeles, and Joe Thomas, a deeply assimilated Native American schoolteacher. In the wake of a mysterious double murder, the two become targets of the city’s corrupt political machine, and must flee to Mexico in order to survive. There, in the humid jungles of the Western coastline, as the threat of global war looms, they enter a brutal, passionate love affair that rearranges their perceptions of the past, the future, and themselves.