After a Persian assignment, Scotty, a wounded Korean War veteran and unsure of his virility, arrived to work in the Andean highlands, where, suddenly, he was forced to save a young suicidal morena. Skipping a respite in his native Laredo Texas caused by estrangement with his dad, his life was again conflicted with a tugging love for this free-spirited morena, in a sleepy pueblo inhabited with such eccentric creatures like a fun-loving Catalan padre and his German girlfriend, a fiesta-fanatic matron and her abusive mate, plus culture-shocked English-only-spoken bosses, and worse, feudal landlords thwarting a highway project relinquished by his fleeing predecessor, a womanizer.