In the second book of Micah's adventures, our aging outlaw finds himself in a high-tech prison of the not-so-distant future, where his former domestic life with Dolores now only seems like a fading dream. Feeling hopelessly desperate and facing the prospect of a lengthy term of incarceration, he hatches an escape plot with the timely assistance of David Carter, a young computer engineer who has access to the institution's computerized automatic-functions system. After a barely successful escape, Micah, David, and their Mexicano prisonmate, Reynaldo, decide to hide at a communal ranch in the badlands of southern New Mexico.
        NoMan - the commune's founding elder and chief philosopher, brings Micah to Silver City for a poetry reading. That night the notorious escapee is reunited with his beloved Dolores, who has been living with her lesbian lover in Silver City during Micah's period of imprisonment. Faced with a succession of severe crises in their lives, Dolores and Micah once again become close friends and lovers.
        The story winds inexorably through the tumultuous early years of the next millennium, as Dolores and Micah struggle for a meaningful existence in a rapidly transforming society. Ultimately, they and their friends (and offspring) witness the birth of a new cooperative social order - a socio-political Phoenix risen from the ashes of civil war, famine, and the plague-ridden years called the "Terror". In the final chapters, Micah, as an aging recluse, recalls the triumphs and tragedies he has experienced in a lifetime spanning the cusp of a new age.