In the 1900s, technology was advancing at a speed which was at that time in Santa Fe as well as everyplace else, not only very new, but confusing and scary to many, especially for the older folks that were comfortable with the way things were. Particularly, it seemed so in most of New Mexico, where tradition was fossilized in a state of maana, tomorrow. Whats the hurry? Like everything else, with time, people accepted what was new in their life and soon found these new technologies a real need. From small and large companies to each individual, new electronic gadgets became both lifesavers as well as hindrances at times. Dog Soldier of Los Cerrillos encompasses the life of some old military combat veterans and their tributes to freedom as well as their unhealed wounds. For many, the thousand-yard stare stayed with them for years. Combat made many soldiers chain-smoke, use drugs, and drink themselves drunk in hopes of reducing the pressure of always being in that life-or-death situation through every mission that would, as time went on, manifest itself into a lifetime of addiction. Cecil Franklin was no different. As a civilian who constantly fought his alcoholism. Falling off of the wagon came and went as lifes pressures grew or ebbed. Being Cheyenne and raised on the reservation in his early years was to teach him the old ways but as he became a young man he had searched out a trade in hopes of assimilating into modern society and move from the poverty of the reservation. He was, as were many other young men, serving in the military and the war in Vietnam. By a stroke of luck he became the handler of a black Labrador called Jet and one of a five man tracker team that searched and hunted in what was sometimes called Indian Country behind enemy lines. After his service, Cecil married, had fathered a daughter, divorced, and raised his daughter on his own after moving to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where his life took many turns.

Small-time journalist John Converse thinks to cash in on the last days of the Vietnam War by becoming involved in a major drug deal, but things go very wrong when he gets back to the U.S. and finds himself hunted by a corrupt government agent.

A stray dog named Stubby braves the World War I battlefields alongside Private J. Robert Conroy. See the story unfold as this brave little canine makes a big difference in the lives of many World War I soldiers.

In his study of the civilian population that fell victim to the brutality of the 1860s Kansas Indian wars, Jeff Broome recounts the captivity of Susanna Alderdice, who was killed along with three of her children by her Cheyenne captors (known as Dog Soldiers) at the Battle of Summit Springs in July 1869, and of her four-year-old son, who was wounded then left for dead.

In Saigon during the last stages of the Vietnam War, a small-time journalist named John Converse thinks he'll find action - and profit - by getting involved in a big-time drug deal. But back in the States, things go horribly wrong. His courier disappears, probably with his wife, and a corrupt Fed wants Converse to find him the drugs, or else. Dog Soldiers is a frightening, powerful, intense novel that perfectly captures the underground mood of the United States in the 1970s, when amateur drug dealers and hippies encountered the violent world of cops on the make and professional killers. 'In this painfully funny and bitterly pungent book, [Stone] picks up "Vietnam" - not the place, but the meaning two decades have given it - and dumps it smack in America's teeming lap; a feat which must place him . . . among the leading writers of his generation' Sunday Time s 'Can be read as a Conrad-like moral fable about Vietnam's legacy of corruption to America, or simply as a Ross MacDonald-style thriller. Either way, it is exceptionally powerful' A. Alvarez 'Robert Stone is that rare thing, a novelist who goes straight to the heart of the modern inferno' John Banville