As Samuel Berkow's tramp steamer approaches Puerto Barrios in Guatemala, he is full of hope that he will be able to remake his life in the New World. But having spent the better part of the last 15 years recovering from injuries sustained in the Great War, navigating between mismatched parents and pining for Lena - the wife who abandoned him - he is ill-equipped to grapple with the malicious, often sadistic characters that inhabit a hot, seedy port town. Part character study and part riveting narrative, The Price of Escape is its own mix of Kafka, Conrad and Cline.