Cotland Sims, a gangster from Miami, must come home to Key West because his mother’s house has fallen off its stilts. For a long time, maybe since always, he’s been estranged from his distant, combative mother, who is only now, in her old age, beginning to soften, starting to circle back to Cot, the son she had disowned. Motivated by the chance to help his mother (along with collateral financial gain), Cot decides to snatch a trove of emeralds that his boss back in Miami, the relentlessly vicious Albertson, kept hidden on a small island. And that’s when the trouble starts. Cot has 48 hours to return the emeralds before he and his family—his younger, slow-minded brother; his life-long, pseudo-girlfriend; his wise, wary mother—are all killed. This tropical thriller becomes a dark fight for survival and a struggle for existential sustenance. By the end, there are heart-breaking deaths, maddening betrayals, and enough shots fired to fill a pool with bullets.