It is 1954 and this Georgian mansion with its abandoned germ warfare lab is home to a single father, his two young sons, and their gay butler. Family tragedy and conflict lead to exile and an objectless six-year road trip, hitch-hiking through the Americas. The reader moves in with the last native Mexican warrior, at war for 75 years in his jungle hideout, with a lost tribe of old-fashioned gauchos, and with destitute street children orphaned by the death squads of a merciless military dictatorship. After fifteen years, back in the decrepit London mansion, the family conflict is resolved by a forbidden dynastic marriage. It's all true.