Living in Surrey, British Columbia, Canada, JONN RICKARD is beginning to rebuild his life after his recent divorce from an alcoholic, First Nations woman. The year is 1968. Still a U.S. citizen, but retaining a work visa, he's employed as a Manufacturing Engineer for a Canadian firm.

One night, entering a local bar, he witnesses a man who appears to be a logger, dragging Jonn's drunken ex-wife out the back door, in an obvious attempt to rape her. When he attacks the logger, he's met with a gun. In the ensuing fight, Jonn ends up taking possession of the gun, and in self-defense, shoots the logger dead. He's arrested for manslaughter and jailed.

The sole survivor of a fatal police van crash, Jonn flees Canada and returns to San Diego, his former home. Finding a job with a San Diego firm called Di-Graphics, he starts life over again as a Plant Engineer, hoping the Canadian police won't pursue him because they can't identify which prisoner is missing.

Months later, Jonn transfers to the Manufacturing Engineering Department and begins working with a college friend NIL ERIKSON. Later, risking it all, they sell themselves as a package deal to a startup branch of Hunnibern, (a Minneapolis based corporation). The two embark on what seems like an impossible mission to start up a half-million square foot manufacturing plant from nothing, to full-scale production in nine months. Young, cocky, and brazen, the two work tirelessly, along with other engineers, overcoming seemingly impossible obstacles and delays.

After successfully meeting the challenge of the startup, each engineer guards his area of responsibility with pride while solving vexing manufacturing problems, dealing with human relationships, and refusing to bend to management whims. They are all irreverent, egotistical, and brilliant individuals.

Jonn falls in love with KAREN OLSON, the switchboard operator and lobby receptionist, only to find that she is married. Crushed and betrayed, he buries himself in his work to avoid the pain. He finds emotional satisfaction by helping several women regain control of their lives, sometimes bending the rule of law to protect them. His innate curiosity and ability to color outside the lines become his trademark, allowing him to find otherwise hidden ways to improve the manufacturing process, which ultimately govern his salary, and his future.

Immensely successful as an engineer, Jonn is promoted into his first supervisory slot, but stumbles, searching for his place between the highly technical manufacturing world and that of managing people. Reconciling his relationship with Karen after she files for divorce helps him find his footing again, giving him the courage to take care of some unfinished, and risky business. His actions will surely prevent another woman from being killed. Maybe more.

After five years of intense work, Hunnibern announces that the San Diego facility will be shut down over the next year, and the product transferred to Phoenix, Arizona. Not wanting to relocate to the hot hellhole, Jonn begins to find a way to stay in San Diego and keep Karen at his side.

Spooked by a newspaper article describing the pursuit by the Canadian RCMP looking for an escaped alleged killer thought to be in the San Diego area, Jonn quickly runs into trouble.

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