"Former L.A. executive Nell Walker finds herself on a bus bound for Twentynine Palms, California as the emptiness of her jampacked life threatens to ruin her. There, she meets small-town car mechanic Monkey Burnett, with whom she has nothing in common--except, she comes to realize, an impossible longing for each other, their constantly questioning and volatile minds, and a bone-deep love for a tiny hard-scrabble desert town. When corporate greed and short-sightedness threaten the fragile Mojave Desert around their homes in Twentynine Palms with devastating solar and wind power farms, Nell and Monkey join together with their Chemehuevi and Anglo neighbors to protect an ancient, sacred trail and the birds and wildlife that live along it" --