A brilliant allegory of modern slavery, the novel does not seek to document the current agricultural industry or to criticize its excesses. The context here is only a pretext to expose the workings of systemic racism, as well as the immobility - not to say despair - that it inflicts on its victims, condemned to eternal repetition and, in many cases, to self-destruction.

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Eddie, 17, is on his own after escaping from Delicious Foods, a giant Louisiana farm where his mother was recruited six years earlier, along with other drug addicts. A fruit and vegetable producer, the company mistreats its employees and keeps them captive through physical terror, debt, and drug addiction.