When a young rancher sets off to find his missing boy in 1950s Montana, seeming coincidence and vague clues lead him through a Dantean world of charred hills and forsaken prairie, past frozen wasteland and snow-bound settlements, finally into an improbable underworld populated by unsavory men. Along the way he is forced to confront the secrets of his family’s past. Allegorical and allusive, Past the Desolate Places is a story of hope and heartbreak, of dark histories and the hard grip of fate.