A mystery hangs over an assembly plant in a violent border city, where an underground laboratory produces a strange chimera. What is the true source of the tissue used in The Sphinx ? What is the explanation for the disappearance of an entire crop of P4s, pigs whose tissues have been radically transformed for human transplantation? And what does Alf Dern, the possibly homicidal former employee who has threatened to go public, know about the The Sphinx 's nefarious source? Narrated through the dark humor of its central character, an associate at the prominent Washington D.C. law firm hired to audit Alf Dern's claims, The Desert Crop unfolds as Kyrie's initial malaise towards the investigation gives way to her dangerous determination to confront the dark lessons of greed, cruelty and inhumanity encrypted in The Sphinx .