A fragment of a film, a young woman's face are the only clues in a man's search for his pastfrom hallucinatory Los Angeles where the freeways are buried in sand and dust storms obscure the sun to a Paris where the lights have gone out and bonfires burn in the streets. Lives intercut with each other and past joins future in a seamless flow, while the present remains elusive and fleeting. Steve Erickson's hypnotic, first novel is a dreamscape where imagination and reality collide and merge.