When Jake drops out of College after taking an honors course that stimulates a crisis of identity, he seeks an escape and pursues an existential path. His honors paper featured Nietzsche and that embattled philosopher's quest for meaning, meaning in a Modern age that had slain the God of the common Western man. Inspired, he frees himself from the bindings of a traditional responsible life and travels west to join an eccentric Buddhist commune beginning a journey that spans a decade of his life.
Never completely satisfied he keeps a journal that serves as an outlet for his discontent and suspicion. Eventually, as the veil falls away at the commune over allegations of physical and sexual abuse, he is encouraged by what he sees as the culmination of events to end his self-imposed exile and head home. But extreme religious diligence is not so easily forgotten and soon he faces the latent force the human mind can present when ten years of disciplined mental restraint is set free.