Tommy is a quiet, passive kid but poverty forces him to change: he must become tough. At the age of four, he climbs excitedly into a patrol car as he and his four older brothers head for jail. Their crime: being evicted. After time in the “joint”, they are sent to an orphanage where they spend four long years before being reunited with their mother and baby sister. The fatherless family struggles to survive on welfare, moving constantly. Home is wherever they stay for a year, maybe two.

The novel follows Tommy through the orphanage, the north woods, the city slums, and finally into the military. The novel is told in Tommy’s own words. As he grows older, the language becomes more sophisticated, his knowledge expands, and his attitudes change. But can Tommy maintain his integrity in these threatening environments?

Duke is big and brash and he rents himself out to find people. His method is basic: when he finds where the bad guys might be hiding, he just breaks down the door and breaks heads. No questions asked.

This time he’s in Colombia on the trail of a kidnapped girl. While he’s not subtle, Duke is persistent and with a little, well, a lot of help from his friends, he finds the girl and rescues her. As he is being pursued by both the kidnappers and a rival gang of bandits, he has to cross the Andes with the girl in tow. Their route leads through a free fire zone, which brings in the army.

But his problems really begin when the grateful, nubile teenager falls in love with him.

"I'm an American," Fred said. He didn't look like a gringo to the Latin-American soldier. He was poor. Shifty. A drifter. His passport was stamped DEPORTED. Fred was down on his luck.

His fortunes soon change. He gets a good job, a company car, and a girlfriend with real class. It seems too good to be true. It is. Fred has been set up, a patsy for the assassination of a general. He ends up on the run from the police, the army, the mafia, U.S. intelligence, and local revolutionaries.

But this time Fred has something to fight for. He goes through the chaos and gunfire of a city at war to try to save the girl.

Kaz is fed up with his job as a bureaucrat in Washington so he accepts an assignment in South America to find the mysterious leader of a revolutionary religious cult. Kaz speaks the language and he knows the terrain. After visiting old friends, he heads into the empty spaces and the terrible beauty of the Andes.

What he finds is violence. To quell the rebellion born of racism and extreme poverty, the army is brutal and is aided by special teams of U.S. troops. There are casual massacres on both sides.

As Kaz journeys deeper into isolation, he vacillates between cynicism and sorrow. His quest leaves him numbed by the callousness of men and the indifference of the arid mountains. Eventually he finds the cult leader at a mass meeting of the Andean believers in a high and secret valley but it is too late.

Among the stars, a space train glides silently toward a distant steel orb — another delivery of prisoners to the prison star. Sections of the orb are controlled by armed prisoners, divided into rival political groups and gangs, with a secure area for the guards and administration.

Among the latest arrivals is an engineer. He is chosen to solve the problem confronting the prison: the orb is rapidly filling up with waste. But no one seems willing to help him.