White Cloud Free

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.

Nearly two decades later, a midlife crisis compels the protagonist to return to Paraguay and find the friend who had helped to save his life so many years before. Through this journey, Peter discovers some hard truths about himself, his faith, and the fluidity of memory.