In this dark historical novel, Garry Disher imagines a world in which small girls are sold by their desperate families and enslaved to men such as the brutal ‘scrap man’ – ‘a schemer, a plotter, a trickster’ in whom ‘nothing ... rang true except rage and self-pity’ and who profits from the labour of womenfolk known as Wife, Big Girl, You, and Sister. Neither the scrap man, nor the women shackled to him, are named because ‘names had no currency in the scrap man’s family’ until, in an act of defiance, You secretly christens herself Lily.