For Tom Dawson and Sam Wilson, life in the northwestern Colorado town of Cottonwood Springs proceeds without any profound awareness or deep concern for a final objective, and certainly with no sense that their personal journeys are destined to deliver them to a strange-sounding town in Mexico known as the City of the Dead. Best friends who served together in Vietnam, the recently widowed Tom and divorced Sam now inhabit each other's life in a ritual of familiar habits and shared history. Tom, a writer since his days as a combat correspondent, tends to nod and observe, while Sam, a Nighthawk...