A guileless group of misfits share an extraordinary undertaking in this novel set in 1968. Recently bereaved, a Montana guitar-maker pursues a dream he has contemplated for many years -- to break the wheel-driven world land-speed record at the Bonneville Salt Flats. Four unlikely team-mates volunteer their energies to build a four-engined streamlined racing car: Jill, an aspiring tap dancer, Beth, a failed fashion model, Ephram, a curmudgeonly engine-builder and Holocaust survivor, and Stan, an orphan, metalworker, and Vietnam draftee-apparent. The thoughts and anxieties of each character are revealed and the meaning they have discovered in their hopes and dreams in life is discovered.