A company-controlled oil town becomes the scene of a layoff and a subsequent boycott led by Rafael Garay, whose wife is killed alongside 17 others in the protest.Mat Darlow, a gentle mining engineer, is sent to the Latin American community to handle the situation. Each man is fighting for control of the Three Sentinels: three, deep, surging oil wells perched on a barren ridge of the Andes.Despite the deadlock, the opponents are instinctively drawn to each other - and one thing links them: Garay's son, Chepe, who attaches himself to both men at war.'Household is a story-teller in direct line of descent from Daniel Defoe and Robert Louis Stevenson' New Yorker