Stephen Blake comes from a long line of Galway Blakes, a family famous in history - or infamous - for jettisoning its Catholic roots to save their land from the English. As a young man he was always happiest when drinking with his mates, and a ready hand in a fight. With no particular plans in mind, he went up to study at Trinity College, and immediately afterward "took the king's shilling" by joining the British army, and came out harder, leaner, and suspect in the eyes of his countrymen. Now nearly forty, he is a good man blown in bad directions. Out of misplaced loyalty he agrees to take part in an IRA bank heist. Doomed to failure from the start, it goes disastrously wrong when his friend is killed, and Stephen must leave Ireland, determined to reinvent himself as an American. Now he and girlfriend Siobhan, best friend Tommy, IRA terrorist Stapleton, and a particularly American sort of psychopath named Dade are all on a collision course somewhere on the road between the dive bars of New York and the pitiless desert of the Southwest.