James Page is a crusty old Vermonter who blasts his TV with a shotgun and locks his 80-year old sister, Sally, in her bedroom. While imprisoned there, she finds and reads a cheap paperback thriller about marijuana smugglers in Mexico (actually written by Gardner and his first wife, Joan). The two stories are then woven together with considerable leaps of time and missing pages in the thriller. At times, Gardner wanders around in philosophy la-la land, while at other times he can write the most surreal and beautiful poetic prose about nature, and at still other times he can portray the emotional torture endured by James and eventual redemption of his humane spirit.