Running from the fallout of the incident that uprooted him from his mundane family life in suburban California, Richard Keiffer finds himself on a South American wine estate where he has no choice but to accept a cryptic bargain extended to him by its maturely flamboyant owner, Madame. Under her baton, he undergoes an intense and disruptive mental, emotional, and physical reeducation designed to turn him into a member of a covert organization, whose guiding principle is that "much good can be achieved with a dash of evil." Only days after being dispatched on his first assignment in southwest France, Richard's reconstructed self is tested well beyond the scope of Madame's plans as he is drawn into an unsettling global health scare. "An Upward Draft" follows the hero of "A Feeble Drift" on the second stage of his transformative journey but is written as a stand-alone novel.