White Cloud Free is an unforgettable story of love and friendship, betrayal and loss, miracles, and memory. Set mostly in Latin America, it is a semi-autobiographical tale of an idealistic, naive Peace Corps volunteer who suffers a series of traumas abroad, leading to unlikely friendships with a semi-homeless 12-year-old boy, an ambitious transexual sex worker, and an eccentric Catholic priest.

At 23, Peter has enlisted in the Peace Corps and finds himself teaching beekeeping in a tiny village in Paraguay. When a lynch mob kills several people in his local village after a disagreement over harvest proceeds, Peter flees with his 12-year-old homeless friend in search of safety—taking him through an indigenous community, a Mennonite colony, a squatters camp, and finally the lawless, chaotic city of Ciudad del Este, where he meets a kind transgender sex worker.