The year is 1827. In a remote hut on the high plains of New South Wales, two strangers spend the night in talk. One, Carney, an illiterate Irishman, ex-convict and bushranger, is to be hanged at dawn. The other, Adair, is the officer of the polce who has been sent out to supervise the hanging. As the night wears on, the two men share memories and uncover unlikely connections in their lives. Outside the hut, Adair's troopers sit uneasily, waiting for the dawn to come.

Carney questions the accidents of birth and fortune that have brought him to this point. Adair looks back to Ellersley, the household in the west of Ireland into which he was adopted; to his relationship with his young foster-brother, Fergus, and the imperious and mercurial Virgilia, daughter of a neighbouring landowner. What has brought Adair all the way to Australia? And why is Carney, and what Carney knows, so important to his future?