Herman Glüber has nearly everything going for him. A corner office at one of the top investment firms in Seattle, plenty of money in the bank, time to go on adventures around the world, and an attractive girlfriend who works as a prominent executive. Herman is handsome, athletic, in the prime of his life, and other than an acute allergy to peanuts, he is in perfect health. While out celebrating the closing of a deal to purchase a sprawling apple orchard in Eastern Washington, Herman encounters a transsexual tarot card reader who saddles him with a horrible curse, and he can no longer accomplish the simplest thing. Herman's frustrations are compounded by the proliferation of an electricity devouring mutant beetle called Agrilus suprema, that hitchhiked to the Pacific Northwest from Inner Mongolia aboard a bed frame that used to belong to the warlord Genghis Khan. A heat wave that has lasted all summer turns to rain, Herman's bright future dims, and the beetles darken the city block by block. A collage of characters struggle to find their path through the chaos, and Herman needs to turn to a twelve-year-old entomologist to save him from himself, and the little monsters with the blue spark between their horns.