In this novel, Terence Clarke dramatically intermingles the story of Nobel-Prize-winning poet Pablo Neruda's escape from Chile in 1949 with events from Neruda's life, both before and after the Communist poet crossed the Andes to reach safety in Argentina. Clarke gives full credit to the men and animals who helped turn a dilettante into a mountain man. The chapters about Neruda's wife, Delia, twenty years his senior, sympathetically trace a woman who never loses faith that her man will return to her.