Wesley Erks, itinerant machinist and adventurer, takes a hefty fee for smuggling a group of illegal Chinese immigrants ("yellowfish") from Vancouver, B.C., to San Francisco in the 1970s. Three are teenaged 'Hong Kong boys', one of whom is dying from an earlier stab wound; the fourth is the son of a rich Chinese casino owner who wants to settle some debts with The Triad, a secret Chinese society. The story of the perilous and suspenseful journey of these five men, filled with colourful fictional and historical characters, is as memorable as the story of the West itself. John Keeble, professor emeritus of creative writing at Eastern Washington University, is the author of four novels, including "Broken Ground" and "Nocturnal America". His fiction and nonfiction are widely published in literary magazines, and he has won a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Washington State Governor's Writers Award.