Set in a paradisiacal Caribbean island, an unhappy construction worker with limited prospects, Jeremy Barnes, accidentally finds an ancient clay object at a work site. Soon after, life takes a turn for the better for him and his family. Years later, his son Michael decides to devote his life to the New Church by becoming one of its Helpers. Michael quickly discovers however that people are not so "good" after all. He doesn't know that the mischievous clay artefact has something to do with it and that his father, two decades earlier, had made a pact with the clay imp -- the devil himself. Michael is tested as Helper and has to decide whether he will fall prey to evil or champion the cause of good. His decision in the end involves absurdism and existentialism as philosophical schools of thought underlying the novel -- a trip into corruption, deceit, adultery, paedophilia and evil at its most subtle, as well as absolute innocence.