Days before the September Eleventh Attacks in New York, young Texas singer-songwriter, Robert Kuhn, feels disenchanted with life in the United States and buys a one-way ticket to Buenos Aires. His life quickly swirls into an epic adventures towards self-realization while he awakens to the conflict between compassion for humanity and struggle for survival. Leaving is Returning is the autobiographical novel that chronicles his escape from himself and rejection of mainstream culture as he travels deep into South American Indigenous underworlds, learning from a cast of ragged characters to live independently of civilization. The epic tale is forged from years of stream-of-consciousness journals that follow his physical/metaphysical journey as his destination slowly dissolves and reality becomes entangled in love, sex, violence, poverty, riches and the drug trade. The writing liberally flows between the first and third person as the poet and protagonist converge. His voice is charged with the present tense urgency inspired by new landscapes, wild experiences and fleeting visions of freedom he unapologetically chases.