Silas Pearson is plagued by nightmares. In them, his wife Penelope, who has now been missing for four years, is leading him to murder victims across the Colorado Plateau. When his dreams lead him to the Atlas Mill Tailings Project outside of Moab, Utah, Silas discovers the corpse of anti-uranium mining activist Jane Vaughn, who had gone missing from Flagstaff, Arizona. Silas travels across the Southwest and finds himself on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, trying to connect the murder with the disappearance of his wife, who was friends with Vaughn. There he confronts a host of suspects who wanted Jane Vaughn dead and who believed his wife, too, was interfering with progress on the Colorado Plateau. All the while, Pearson's nightmares, threaded with snatches of prose from the writings of Edward Abbey, are leading him closer to some final confrontation -- but with what?