The jagged mountains dividing China and Burma belong to the Wa, an indigenous group who have outwitted the CIA to create the world's mightiest narco-state, controlling more territory than Israel and with more troops than Sweden. Are they crime lords? Or visionaries?

Wa State has become a real nation with its own highways, anthems, schools and flags. Its leaders promise a utopia, using profits from trafficking heroin and meth to attain what China's other frontier peoples, Tibetans and Uighurs, can only dream of: a state of their own. Patrick Winn (author of Hello, Shadowlands) embarks on a risky journey of discovery, chasing clues about the forbidden republic from Thailand to Burma to the secretive Wa State itself.