Michael Sullivan comes of age on the eve of the third millennium in a small country town in fur-ravaged Western Australia. 'Furred world, third world,' he muses it is the only life he knows. The infestation began before he was born. The state is strictly quarantined from the rest of the country and his burning desire to escape to Melbourne is matched only by his zeal to stay and play his part in making a better world. Revolution or escape? Hungry for love, Michael's dilemma is painfully compounded by his fundamentalist Christian preacher father, his obsession with beautiful and inaccessible girls, and his sense of guilt about failing to live up to his dying mother's wishes.