Haunted by the death of his son in
infancy and the love of his life many years later, Jake Montgomery grudgingly
agrees to a form of "journal therapy" that allows him to expose and confront
the sharp, insistent pain that he regularly buries with rage and scotch and
television. As he writes, secrets tightly bound within him gradually
unwind--first in racially segregated Ocala, Florida, in the 1950s, where his
best childhood friend was a Puerto Rican jockey, then in Ireland, when a summer
as a stable apprentice ushers in a new and all-consuming passion.

Jake relives his experiments with
free love in the 1960s, and is embroiled once more in choices of life and death
on the battlefields of Vietnam, and later, as undercover intelligence officer
in the countries of Eastern Europe. What begins as a journey chronicling
youthful discovery spirals swiftly into spaces where loss overwhelms and the
path chosen is one of ruthlessness and revenge. It is the birth, life, and
death of a special horse that gives Jake a sense of purpose in his desperate
search for a reason to carry on.