Is personal identity something that we generate from within ourselves, or is it something imposed on us by loved ones, by career, by the people and circumstances that we encounter in the course of our lives? Do we create the world we live in, or does it create us?

Faced with the disintegration of their marriage, Matt Wheelock and Michelle Lomax turn to a charismatic philosopher known only as the Teacher for guidance and support. The Teacher, seemingly a man without an identity, preaches a message of a sublime universe of mind beyond our own material plane, hidden from all but the enlightened few.

When two of the Teacher's acolytes die in a very public act of suicide, his remaining followers find themselves drawn into his world of deception and paranoia. They embark on a chaotic trek across Mexico and Central America, running toward a haven that only the Teacher can find, and from a threat that only he can identify.

Along the way, they all find their most fundamental assumptions about who they are being challenged. Some will return unscathed, others will be changed forever ? and some won't make it back at all. At the end of the road Matt and Michelle will find that not only are there no easy answers to the questions they started out with, but that the questions themselves may no longer have any meaning.