Journalism professor Adam Colbert has come home to Albuquerque after a reporting career that took him all over the world. A nineteenth century adobe house with a mansard roof that he admired as a boy is now his home on Mountain Road. He loves the old neighborhood and the road that once connected Albuquerque with the Sandia Mountains. But some unwelcome new neighbors are the organizers of a twenty-week abortion ban initiative on the fall municipal election ballot. Adam's journalism students write investigative stories about the initiative and its backers, which puts him in the crosshairs of a corrupt university regent who supports the anti-abortion campaign. Two women, one a young anti-fascist vagabond and the other a gorgeous and ambitious graduate student, enter his life and dramatically influence his political activism and his romantic experience.