In this potent and beautiful novel, the writer <I>The New York Times </I>calls “prophetic about twenty-first-century America” looks into the mind and heart of a scholar who was recruited to help the mili­tary conceptualize the war. <P>We see Richard Elster at the end of his service. He has retreated to the desert, in search of space and geologic time. There he is joined by a filmmaker and by Elster's daughter Jessica—an “otherworldly” woman from New York. The three of them build an odd, tender intimacy, something like a family. Then a devastating event turns detachment into colossal grief, and it is a human mys­tery that haunts the landscape of desert and mind.