John Gload is a seventy-seven-year-old murderer. He has been killing for over half a century before he is caught for the first time.
Valentine Millimaki is the young man in the Copper County sheriff's department who draws the overnight shift after Gload's arrest. He is tasked with getting the killer to confess to a string of unsolved murders.
Gload and Millimaki sit across from each other in the dark, swapping stories and secrets. As sheriff and criminal talk through the bars night after night, Millimaki's safety is threatened within his own department. Then a brazen act of violence leads to a manhunt and a stunning revelation that ensures Gload's past and Millimaki's future are for ever entwined.
Set against the extraordinary landscape of Montana, The Ploughmen is a tense, compelling and powerfully moving novel that announces the arrival of a major American talent.