[1] The novel follows six young characters from diverse backgrounds and various countries as their paths meet and they travel together through parts of Spain, Portugal, Morocco and Mozambique.

The story is told from the perspective of the narrator, George Fairbanks, who is an investment analyst for the fictional company World Mutual Bank in Switzerland.

After finishing school, she finds a job in an office at the docks, but eventually becomes curious about the world beyond Tromsø, and goes to vacation in Torremolinos, Spain for fifteen days.

The fourth character of the book is Cato; he is introduced as the son of the Reverend Claypool Jackson, a local minister in the area trying to salvage his community through his church.

He is shuffled between Israel and America throughout his youth, and even fights and becomes a hero in the Six-Day War, before finally enrolling in Technion University in Haifa.

Gretchen is introduced as a very intelligent girl from Boston who, at the age of 19, has already completed her bachelor's degree, and is working for senator Eugene McCarthy's presidential campaign.

After campaigning across the United States for McCarthy's nomination in Chicago at the Democratic Convention, during the riots she and the people she is with are falsely arrested.

Eventually, during their stay, the characters are approached by a woman, Susan Elgerton, who tries to convince Cato and Gretchen to join her in the name of starting a violent revolution back in America.

Harvey's old music tapes include the vocalist Bea Wain; her recording of "My Reverie", discussed in two separate chapters, serves as a symbol of the generation gap.

Here, Gretchen starts to show her feelings for Clive, a recurring character throughout the book who brings news from the outside world as well as new music from his homeland in England.

During the week, Yigal's American grandfather tracks him down and tries to bring him back to Detroit with him, although he is torn because he doesn't like America, although something in it still has him interested.

The group then decides to head to Marrakesh, Morocco, where there is a man who could help out Joe with some papers, so he could re-enter the United States at some point, and not be considered a criminal.

In the final destination of the journey, the remainder of the group ends up in Marrakesh, Morocco, where the marijuana trade is booming, a town where young people could get lost very easily.

He is setting down the log of a number of people who think they may be able to solve some problems by postponing consideration of them...those interested in knowing how a sympathetic member of the older generation views some of the shenanigans of the younger will find “The Drifters” a tolerable interlude, especially as it is spiced with travelogue evocations of foreign climes.