Walter Cole, a Californian exile who dodged the draft in 1917, emerges from the thorn forest of Paraguay's Chaco Boreal. Long years of solitude have left him on the brink of physical and mental breakdown. He finds sanctuary among the pacifist Mennonites who settled the area in the 1920's, but soon they all become trapped by the Chaco War, a ghastly, fruitless conflict between Paraguay and Bolivia, and the foreign governments and oil companies who...