The narrator leaves his hard-working Mexican father and American mother at 18, attending EMT school after high school. Then he spends several years in Mexico. Following tours in Sarajevo and Afghanistan as a military medic, he works as a civilian paramedic in New York City. He marries Gloria and has two sons. But beneath these surface facts lies a study in contrasts,

Cage traces a jagged timeline as he journals his private thoughts. On the outside, he is a war hero, saving lives and defending liberty, but in his personal life, he victimizes those under his care. He toggles between a Mexican identity and an American one. He befriends the man who betrays him, imbibing his idiosyncratic wisdom. He lies to his therapist for fun. Cage hates his father while also following his abusive example. He fights his wife while needing her. He is happiest when he is sad, most alive when he is on the verge of death. Between extremes, he seemingly has no center.

The storyline meanders and challenges conventional notions of narrative flow. The chapters hop back and forth between 2020 and 1986 and points in between. The misaligned chronology begs the question of causality: Does the fact that he tells his tragic childhood story at the end have a bearing on his earlier adult confessions? Set in the midst of world troubles, such as war, terrorism, and pandemic, Cage’s crimes provide a stark perspective on who is a victim and perpetrator. Its confessional conceit challenges the reader to act as a priest of sorts, an arbiter of absolution and meaning, bearing witness to a tragic figure with no recourse for accountability. The author's book is a devastating and mystifying psychological portrait of a contemporary American man confounded by domestic and global disaster.

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