The lost coast

There are places of sure enchantment: Nevada's Great Basin - the classic Western high desert - is one of them. It's a wilderness, with good bars in little towns far out in the long, quiet valleys. In one of those bars, in the town of Eureka, in the middle of a spring day when the light runs sweet, seven people gather: Cookie, a cowgirl, fry-cook, hard drinker; Chiara, a professor on sabbatical, and on the run; her sixteen-year old daughter, Izzy, of doubtful paternity; the painter Renato, whose lonesome years at work have concentrated his amorous disposition. There is Juha, a contractor who is as strong as a horse but blushingly shy; Muscovado, a Jamaican journalist whose knowledge of the sexual arts will be searchingly tested; and Ananda, a securities attorney, blonde, logical, and delicious. They meet, as is inevitable. And so tasty is the whiskey, so compelling the twilight, that they do the only sensible thing: They band together for a journey across the Great Basin on the way to the legendary Lost Coast of northern California. Like all such trips, it is not merely a transit through the gift-giving wilderness, nor just a series of visits to remote settlements, but also a journey of the soul. What would such a group find along the way? They find a world made of stories. At bars and ranch houses, in mechanics' shops, by the side of desert lakes, they find stories told by bartenders, solitary ranchwomen, Shoshone sorcerers; by cooks and angels, coyotes and peacocks. And each story tells them something about where they are going, and how to get there.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Fiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.