Following the death of his mother, Lula Pace Fortune Ripley, Pace decides to close his construction business and leave his home in New Orleans to undertake an unorthodox religious pilgrimage. Intrigued by the Up-Down, a mystical fifth direction mythologised by ancient cultures, Pace sets out on a search for the centre of consciousness. Pace's voyage is outward, among strangers, and inward into the fifth direction that is the up-down, in a sweeping, voracious human tale that takes no prisoners, sees extreme brutalities and expresses a childlike wonder.