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.