Beginning like an investigation into family history, the flow of poetic narrative introduces Milton, Reeves' substitute father, a man combining the extremes of a violent temper and protective paterfamilias. As if Milton's tale has been hurled, like a stone, into a lake of histories, other stories and fates ripple and gather round, fuse with each other and seem to repeat themselves ad infinitum. Reeves looks for the motives lurking in the murky depths of these people known as his family. Why do we so often declare war on our own children? Personal and global histories merge and throw light on other. Where do these family wars and all the "normal" wars connect? The only way of understanding the links and forgiving parental warfare is to investigate their biographies, their childhoods, to exhume the wars they fought. An elegiac, visually sophisticated work tracing the relationship between personal history and the course of events in the family and outside world.