Paroled after six months' hard time for tax evasion, Dave has landed what sounds like the perfect job--caretaker for the Texas beach house whose eccentric owner left her fortune to her 23 cats. What Dave doesn't know is that the house is the focus of a power struggle that involves a host of bizarrecharacters: the beautiful, aging adventuress; the pastor of the local UFO church; Dave's fundamentalist parole officer; a pair of treasure hunters, one blind, one deaf; and last but not least, the enigmatic Terrell--philosopher, political theorist, and escaped murderer.Allied against them are Dave's new friends, the skateboarders squatting in the concrete castle down the road. These are society's newest outlaws, and from them Dave will learn the real meaning of freedom in an unfree world.