"Sabine is the most mercurial woman Peter Thorpe has ever known. Such is his desire for her that he overturns his whole life--his disillusioned merchant-banker's life--and leaves everything behind, not caring that his lover is of no fixed address, nor that his search for her will take him to the beating heart of New Ageism in northern California. Each of his fellow seekers is in hot pursuit of that elusive something (happiness?), and in their eccentric...

When a reporter and a prayerful pastor begin to compare notes on the town of Ashton, they find themselves fighting a New Age plot to subjugate the townspeople, and eventually the entire human race.