The author incorporates some of his experiences of 35 years in the operating room with some humorous descriptions of the history and development of modern anesthesia. The novel also involves two kidnappings by a sadistic Chesapeake Bay waterman and the vigilante executions of a kidnapper and pedophiles, in a manner that could only be created by the imagination of an anesthesiologist. Finally, it is a story about the exciting sixties and seventies in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., and the dynamic influence of a self-made millionaire on the politics of the time.