Thompson's classic novel describes the underworld of desperate men that inhabited the part of Texas known as "South of Heaven" in the 1920's. Laying a gas pipeline with a motley work crew of hoboes, alcoholics, jail-birds and petty criminals, Tommy Burwell knows that he isn't doing himself any favors. But he cannot extricate himself from the cycle of violence and ruthlessness that ties him to the six-hundred other transients whose fate he shares.