Andreas is a university librarian known for her love of keeping things organized. But one summer, she finds herself falling away from a sense of well being, depressed, 'out of order.' After voluntarily checking into a psychiatric hospital, she finds herself in a room next door to Lathin Hawkins, a prison inmate who has also been hospitalized. As she talks with her new neighbor, Andreas begins to come out of herself--ultimately finding the healing she needs through a friendship that has developed in the darkest circumstances, and despite boundaries of race, gender, education and age.

The Order of Things is a story and celebration of a friendship between two unlikely people in the most unexpected place--and of how friendship can bring hearts back into order.