The protagonist and his brother are what your average corporate schmuck would call losers-- guys who live from day to day, with no particular investment in making loads of cash or advancing in the social hierarchy.  When the protagonist's brother kills a boy accidentally, the two brothers lurch through a number of incompetent attempts to avoid jail.

The book builds to a genuine redemption, as the trials endured lead the protagonist to realize the value of what he has lost, but can regain-- the love he shared with a prostitute's daughter, a woman he shunned because of the circumstances her life forced upon her.

Throughout the book, the protagonist tells stories, and the stories he tells are the kind of fabulist concoctions that we see on television and in films-- wild adventues replete with coincidence and extreme reversals of fortune.  While his stories are not meant to believed, they comfort his brother as he slides into death, and help him set his priorites.