Plot summary of 70,000 word novel: Twenty-two years have passed since Joe Petrini's ignominious dismissal from Peru as a US Peace Corps volunteer. To block out the pain of his rejection, he adopts an ersatz like in the States until a strange series of events occurs which sends him back to the isolated valley where he once worked. He finds a very different Peru from the one he left with a government recovering from a bloody civil ar against Sendero...