In The Fifth Station, Matthew, the youngest of three brothers, has died at nineteen, inside a foundry smokestack in Illinois. The surviving brothers take their grief and misfortune to the desert landscape of New Mexico. There, one brother indulges the family failing…alcoholism. The other settles for life on the bum. The two compelling narratives--one by each of the surviving brothers--describe the process of making new lives from the ashes of the old ones.