Based on long research and a unique immersion in the jungle warfare of Nicaragua, the author, an American journalist, presents a firsthand account of the contras and their fight to the death with the Sandinistas. It is all here, the plotting, the foreign backers, the CIA, the blood and grit and dirt, the terror, the flamboyance and the tragedy. A final proof of realism: nothing in the account, whose color and immediacy are equaled by no other, suggests any viable route to a peaceful solution.