Anna Schippers, descendant of Southern Africa's rural San people, receives a mysterious letter which prompts her first ever visit to Hout Bay, Cape Town in search of her missing sister who fled there three years earlier with a dream to run a hair salon. When Anna is told that her sister in fact worked as a township bar girl under the sinister influence of Xhosa tsotsi Zuko, she suspects he might be responsible for her disappearance. During a steaming hot summer in the pulsating township of Mandela Park, Zuko and Anna, opposites in many ways, discover they have one terrible secret in common.