The quest leads him into the hidden life of his Texas community, where the wealthy silkily victimize the less fortunate, and psychopathic murderers like the wonderfully drawn Garland T. Moon are pawns in a much larger game. Holland's search also puts him in conflict with federal authorities, whose drive to win the war against border drug smugglers leads them to bargain with the likes of Felix Ringo, a graduate of the U.S. government's school for assassins and a man who has his own questionable past. All of us have mistakes in our past we need to address. In Billy Bob's case it's that fact that he killed his best friend, L.Q. Navarro. It was an accident, but it is the reason Billy Bob is where he is when the book begins.
All art is morality play.
The United States has always been a violent place. We've been at war since our inception, with only brief periods of peace. Which is not to say Burke is an advocate of violence. Sam Morgan Holland, a drover and gunfighter on the Chisholm trail who is eventually ordained into preaching. As Billy Bob struggles to make amends for his past, he reads Sam Morgan Holland's diary, an account of his pursuit of the Rose of Cimarron, the legendary beauty who was a member of the Dalton-Doolin gang, and his struggles to remain true to his ordination and to control his own wildly violent tendencies.