The novel is set in the early 1970s in the fictional town of Rooster, Arizona. The narrator is Kipp, a college dropout from Ohio who travels to Rooster to live with his Uncle Balbinus, a navy veteran of the second world war and later a photographer of nuclear bomb tests.
Carving out a life in Rooster as a young photographer and taxicab driver for the Hopeless Cab Company, Kipp deals with the madness of Lenni the Chicken, his uncle's fierce obsession over the massive devastation that mankind can unleash, and the challenges of living in a tough, isolated town that defines ammunition and firearms as currency.
While Kipp attends a funeral at Sailor Mountain, he becomes enamored with Lovely Sailor.
The antagonist of the story is the power-hungry Orli Ordzhowikidzepyatakov and his callous partners who forever lay siege to the inhabitants of Rooster.
Perhaps the safest thing we can say is that Rooster is in the desert and the desert is an ominous place for the guileless and the unprepared.