Philip Daughtry writes, both autobiographically and fictionally, of love, intellectuality, danger, and farce. Daughtry trespasses federal land in Oregon to greet a wild stallion; follows a young cheating husband through pagan Ireland as he attempts to heal a wounded bird to win back the trust of his wife; visits a doomed drunken poet in Helsinki; finds first love, for a night, in 1960s Paris; works with an insane cowhand in lawless Belize backcountry; traffics special cargo into Ireland; describes the lives of children living and playing in an abandoned prison camp in northern England; travels with gypsies along Spain's Gold Coast; and speculates on a flooded world where haunted men sail between mountaintops of islands.