When Shane wakes up one morning, his mind is an empty canvas. All he remembers is, that he wants to go - must go - West. With the last of his savings, he buys an oversized Oldsmobile and sets out on a cross-country trip. On his second day on the road, he picks up Dorothy, an extroverted teenager, and the journey becomes a surreal odyssey. Along the way, the incompatible couple wards off religious radicals, rescues a waitress, and has to deal with a special sort of desert inhabitant. When they arrive at a radio station and join the owner in his midnight art performance, memory returns, and it becomes clear that it's not Shane who is in charge of the steering wheel. Then there is the story of the anonymous narrator, whose hypersensitive personality prevents him from holding on to any job for more than a week. A college dropout, embarks on a quest for the most boring occupation ever. He winds up at his former college, where he is hired by warmhearted but foul-mouthed Pat to keep an eye on the copy room. Like all good things, the daily monotony comes to an end when his encounter with a mysterious girl introduces the dreaded change. Soon enough, routine turns into obsession. The narrator makes it his mission to find out everything about her. When they finally meet outside of school, their date comes to a tragic climax at the local art gallery. Two plot lines, seemingly unrelated, intertwine more and more, luring the reader into a web of past and present, inside and outside. Half romance, half enigma, PARALLELS mixes form and content into a bittersweet tale about love, abstraction, coffee, and the persistence of school buses.