Two old Tibetans are rushing to restore the spiritual balance caused by the violent death. A sullen resistance fighter is racing to battle a new foe. But Shan Tao Yun, the exiled former investigator from Beijing just released from four years in the gulag, has set out to find justice, an elusive goal among the embittered, forgotten people of western China.

Guided by a spirited young Kazakh woman, Shan begins to peel away the many layers of secrets that hide the true motives of the killer, discovering an American dead in the local prison, a haunting ruin of the Silk Road, an apparent infiltrator of the dissident movement. Ultimately Shan's answers can be found only by revealing still greater tragedies. Justice, in the rough form he has come to expect, is available only if he is able to pierce the hatred and distrust that has been bred by Beijing's rule.