Richard Warren runs a small American oil company and hopes to explore for oil in the Caspian Sea. He is struggling to build his grand ventures while he searches for a missing friend and begins to fall in love with a woman. More fundamentally, his story is that of a very modern man whose career shapes his life. Fewer and fewer of us live in the places where we grew up or keep in touch with the people who grew up with us. Professions are our modern tribes. Professions are the social settings of our lives, the dominant forces of our days. More than ever before, we form friendships on the job, find mates on the job, and build our homes wherever our work leads in an increasingly international world. Richard Warren is a man of this globalizing world.