This book is about a dirty little war fought between the Communists and the United States in the remote and beautiful kingdom of Laos, in south-east Asia. Opium-growing hill tribesmen variously known as the Hmong and the Meo became deeply involved in this struggle, eventually fighting on both sides. As a result they were virtually destroyed as a community, and their remnants scattered to the four corners of the earth. Colin Mason was in the war zone in Laos during those years, seeing in the fate of the Meo the disaster that almost always follows when big powers fight over the territory of small ones. He observed much of what is in this novel at first hand.