Burned out with law, Jonas Lundgren sets out to find a simpler life. He buys an abandoned homestead in northern New Mexico, planning to stretch his savings until he can support himself as a writer. What he doesn’t plan is falling in love, not only with the land itself and the chicanos who live there, but with his neighbor’s niece. When she breaks their engagement, Jonas is shattered. To make ends meet, Jonas signs on with a small newspaper. This interim job turns into a career that leads him from the Detroit race riots to the Six Day War, and writing under the byline of Jonas Blake, he wins a Pulitzer. The celebration ends when Blake wakes in jail with no memory how he got there. Nor is the first time this has occurred, and it becomes painfully clear that Jonas must find a different way to live or he will surely die.