In Empire of Clouds veteran author R. H. McBride scales through the chasms of his life with a type of gruesome honesty and force that embodies a bladed hurricane. Keeping the focus on those that have touched him the most, McBride shows a mirror of himself through the incredible encounters that have broken and refined him. From being ordered to take a vow of silence in the US Navy to being a hitchhiking fortune teller, to finding his calling as a writer and his evolution through drunkenness, McBride shows the soul searching journey that has lead him through the darkest of places and onward toward the light. With no restraint of pen, the young man pays homage to the loves of his life with passion, depravity and indebted woe. Struggling for sanity after the loss of his son, he tells of his battle for peace in sobriety and the eternal search for God. This awe inspiring work is nothing short of poetic, masterful and tragic.