The Gate of Two Snakes

The book is about Americans in love in Peru in 1973–74, when Watergate preoccupied everybody back home, when Allende had just been overthrown in Chile, and when things weren't very stable around or between the characters. The title refers to their garden gate in Cuzco, which had a stone lintel with twin serpents. He took it as a propitious sign for renewal of their love, since the snake meant good luck and prosperity for the Incas. Of course, in Eden, it meant the opposite, an ambiguity he appreciated as he reported on the aftermath of the Allende coup and the return of Peron, while trying to make it as a foreign correpondent so he could be with Liz, a photographer based in Cuzco.

Peru seemed stable by comparison to DC, an inversion of the usual political stability of North versus South America, but in impoverished Ayacucho Province, a Maoist rebel group, Sendero Luminoso, had arisen, and Liz had been taking photos there the summer before, creating problems with the government they didn't need, in addition to personal concerns with free love and open marriage, black market, and stolen art, so there was chaos inside their gate as well as outside.