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.