Lovely professor Denise Jones is glad to get the obligatory visit with her mother over with. All smiles she drives out of L.A. planning to spend the last few days of her vacation in Las Vegas before returning home to Chicago. Native New Yorker and consummate ladies man Bob Talasota, who's never been out west before, departs his cousin's house in San Bernardino, excited to check out Sin City, hit the crap tables, see the show girls, party down with a tasty babe or two. Leaving a convenience store fifty miles northeast of Barstow, Poppy Quinn-a middle age theologian from Texas-intends to spend the night in Handelton, the nearest town according to his road map, and wrap up his trip to Nevada the next day. But none of them make it across the Mojave Desert. Forced to drive down a rocky canal formed by a prehistoric river, they meet one another when the riverbed ends at the base of a sandy mountain topped by a stone cliff. Realizing they've somehow been yanked from conventional reality they have no choice but to walk around it, since traveling back the way they came is unthinkable. The paradox deepens as one mysterious event leads to another, yet despite the ominous portents Poppy refuses to abandon his faith. Believing The Almighty must have a purpose for allowing him and his two new friends to go through this horrifying ordeal, he arrives at a shocking conclusion-this macabre vortex they've been drawn into revolves around Bob and Denise. But can he convince them he's being driven by an epiphany rather than a nervous breakdown before it's too late?