Aud and Maud are sitting in the back seat when the engineer loses it, when the family is separated from its everyday life as well as the road and one of them, Ruth Bore, along with everything that used to be her, comes to an end from one second to the next. The rock never flinched nor moved an inch, the rock sat where rocks sit and halted the fast flesh, the furious flesh, halted the movement of the daring flesh, and of what had been Ruth only the face remained intact, a quivering disk atop a moving layer of slivers and splinters, its mouth half open as if she had tried to introduce herself to something way too unknown, too steep. Too black to be. Too deep.

Nearly three decades later, the journey of some peaceful drivers is threatened by a black Mercedes. 18 year old Lovall, still too young to not have a knowledge of all things, decides to find out who, or what, is behind the wheel in the accident-ridden car.

In this heartfelt, essayistic, yet gothic novel, Gunstein Bakke breaks new ground in our understanding of both what traffic really is and does to us, and of what a novel can be. He shows us how we are hit by both traffic and love, and by language itself.