Cameraman Brendan Leary survived the ambush of the Big Buddha Bicycle Race-but Tukada, his star-crossed lover, did not. Numb, Leary returns to combat, flying night operations over the mountains of Laos. When his gunship is shot down, he survives again, hiking out of the jungle with Harley Baker, the guitar-playing door gunner he loves and hates. Leary is discharged but remains in Thailand, ordaining as a Buddhist monk and embarking on a pilgrimage through the wastelands of Laos, haunted by what Thais call pii tai hong-the restless, unhappy ghosts of his doomed crewmates.

This story of healing and redemption honors three groups missing from accounts of the Vietnam War-the air commandos who risked death flying nightly over the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the active-duty airmen who risked prison by joining the GI antiwar movement, and the people of neutral Laos, whose lives and country were devastated.