by Robert Stone
First published 1982
Three Americans find themselves trapped in Tecan as this Central American nation slides toward civil war. The ancient country seethes with local terrorists and revolutionaries fighting government forces, while foreign agents work their own schemes in the shadows. Each American faces impossible choices as the violence escalates around them. Stone drops his characters into a world where loyalties shift daily and survival depends on navigating between competing factions that all claim justice as their cause. The Americans discover that in Tecan, good intentions mean nothing when caught between those who kill for change and those who kill to prevent it. This is a story about ordinary people who stumble into history and find themselves changed by forces they never understood.
Genres: american-fiction, 20th-century, adventure, political-thriller
Vibes: atmospheric, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: fish-out-of-water, ordinary-people-in-extraordinary-circumstances
Setting: Tecan
Period: 20th-century
440 pages · Mass Market Paperback · Ballantine Books
Content warnings: violence