Now a fragile ninety-two years old and committed to the notion of "leaving like a lady," Anna Madrigal has seemingly found peace in the bosom of her "logical family" in San Francisco : her devoted young caretaker, Jake Greenleaf ; her former tenant Brian Hawkins ; Brian's daughter Shawna ; and Michael Tolliver and Mary Ann Singleton, who have known and loved Anna for nearly four decades. Some members of Anna's family are bound for the otherworldly landscape of Burning Man, the art community in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada where sixty thousand revelers will build a temporary city designed to last only a week. Anna herself has another Nevada destination in mind : a lonely stretch of road outside of Winnemucca where the sixteen-year-old boy she used to be ran away from the whorehouse he called home. With Brian and his beat-up RV, she journeys into the dusty troubled heart of her Depression-era childhood, where she begins to unearth a lifetime of secrets and dreams, and to attend to unfinished business she has long avoided.