A severely wounded veteran of Vietnam is released from an army hospital to apparently live the rest of his days in the cellar of his parents home. In a somewhat miraculous recovery, he finally ventures forth to Africa as an American vagabond, eventually returning home to seek a fortune in the market place. Instead the fury of his pursuit drives him to unsustainable ends and into the refuge of an exceptional woman. Together they break the ties that bind and escape to the war in Lebanon. There they make a marriage that plummets and ascends according to the shifting war and to their own troubled convictions toward each other against the backdrop of the Israel invasion of a Lebanon already shredded by internal strife. The book attempts to weave the inherent uncertainties of a daring love affair, the presumptions of the American experiment and the fallacies of Charity amidst the chaos of a Lebanon at war. Variously, it mixes 'death at its doorstep', the essential confusion about 'developing the benighted', the adventure of 'close calls' and adventures at sea, the birth of a silver haired 'habibi' and finally the interminable search for loveliness--the crow on his shoulder in flight for a precious moment.