One man has done more to preserve the ancient wisdom of the Celestials than anyone, and that man is sinologist Gordon Highsmith. And now he's on death row only hours away from a date with the gallows! He'll need every bit of Oriental wisdom he can glean from his book of aphorisms, The Way Out, to get out of this fix. And having publishers like the nefarious Vinnedge brothers doesn't help. All in all, Gordon is in a mess that only the webwork literary skills of Harry Stephen Keeler could fix-or come up with in the first place!