Aden Echo, a young boy who grows up during the 1940s, is befriended by an unlikely spiritual teacher and martial arts master. Aden's apprenticeship with Xian helps him develop, along with physical skill, mystical understanding and meditative silence. Years later, Aden has to draw upon his unusual experiences with Xian to survive unspeakable horror and violence during the Vietnam War. In the autumn of 1972, recently discharged from the Air Force, Aden is plunged into the cauldron of community psychiatry, where he is confronted with chaos and danger that test his unique capacities. Beset by the recurring trauma of his harrowing ordeal in Vietnam, Aden's greatest challenge is to maintain stability in his life as he inadvertently becomes involved in assisting with the investigation of a series of violent crimes perpetrated by a psychotic killer. Aden's search for a peaceful life keeps getting derailed, and neither his attempts at intimate relationships nor his quest to bring positive change to a tarnished community provide a definite answer. It is only by going deeper, into an unfathomable dimension, that Aden has any chance for salvation. Yet boundlessness has its own paradoxical twists and turns that will ultimately bring events around Aden to a head.