The story centers between Mathes's release from federal prison and his release from the purgatory of a halfway house in Las Vegas, Nevada in 1985. Mathes had been an honorable, decorated soldier in the Army National Guard who had become a federal inmate after conviction for my role in covering up the theft of a machine-gun by a friend. At its heart, it is the story of a young man, who after his release from prison, struggles to create a new life as he searches for work and friendship with the stigma of being a felon as he copes with a fractured sense of identity, his past, and the lure of booze he is forbidden to have.  JERRY D. MATHES  grew up a feral child in the deserts of the American Southwest who loved to read library books. He is the author of Ahead of the Flaming Front: A Life on Fire , winner of the North American Book Prize; an essay collection Fever and Guts: A Symphony;   The Journal West: Poems; and Of Time and Punishment: A Memoi r. Among things he’s done to support his writing, and two daughters have been a wildland firefighter on a helicopter-rappel crew and logistics at Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, Antarctica where he led the Southernmost Writers Workshop in the World.