Johnson and his kid brother Eddie grew up in the suburban woodlands near a large lake in a quiet New England town north of Boston. They played together, survived the jocks and bullies and popular kids in school, and later fought the enemy in Vietnam.

But as the brothers struggle with realities of the grown-up world, thirty-seven-year-old Eddie vanishes one day from his desert home in Tucson, Arizona. Is his exile a self-imposed attempt to hide from life's mounting troubles, or is he quietly looking for a better life? Or worse, is foul play involved?

Johnson spends the next seventeen...