There's much going on, much to pay attention to and think about, in this novel. It's the story of a couple and their two children who begin a road trip from New York to the southwest. The couple are slowly realizing their marriage is at an end. While both are involved in the recording of sound, their goals for this trip diverge: the wife, whose voice narrates the first part, is interested in the fate of migrant children, specifically two daughters of a friend who may be missing and lost in the desert. The husband want to find Apacheria, the lands in which the last Apaches fought with and surrendered to their white conquerors. This first part is broken up by section headings reflecting the mind of the narrator; the voice is rational and reality-based, educated, a bit melancholy.
The second part of the novel, told in the voice of the son and addressed to his step-sister, is written without a break in a far different, more breathless and almost hallucinatory style. Different levels of reality, as well as past and present, overlap like contrapuntal voices, and the themes of the story--lostness, history, oppression, remembrance--come together at the end of this richly provocative novel. A book you may want to read twice.