Philip Caputo

The Mexican village of San Patricio is being menaced by a bizarre, cultish drug cartel infamous for its brutality. As the townspeople try to defend themselves by forming a vigilante group, the Mexican army and police have their own ways of fighting back. Into this volatile mix of forces for good and evil (and sometimes both) steps an unlikely broker for peace: Timothy Riordan, an American missionary priest who must decide whether to betray his vows...

A disparate group of men and women confronts their own indivudual moral crises, fears, and physical dangers as they work to alleviate the hardships and suffering caused by civil war and famine in contemporary Sudan.