Badlands portrays the twenty-four-year marriage of Caro and Daniel Singlemanthe marriage that was, is, and might have been. As the dying Caro confronts a night of crisis, the couple attempt to reshape the present by reconstructing the past through the interleaving of memory, hallucination, and dream. In this fraught terrain, Badlands explores two human mysteriesthe inscrutability of the heart and the persistence of hope in the face of overwhelming loss.