Sid Emerson goes missing while trying to determine what mysterious cosmic force lies within Death Valley's wilderness-a force that draws in such an odd mixture of eccentrics, societal outcasts, alien conspiracies, and those seeking hidden truths to ancient earth mysteries.

Sid's niece hires local desert rat Paddy Darwin to find her uncle. However, she soon discovers that strange things happen when the lost search for the lost, especially within a harsh alien landscape filled with clandestine "patriots" chasing shapeshifting alien Lizard People, a media-seeking crackpot who believes his dead-body-detecting machine can locate additional victims of the Charles Manson murders, and an overworked sheriff who continuously recovers withered and desiccated bodies from Death Valley's enchanting yet brutal landscape. The journey forces Paddy to face his troubled past in ways that provide a few lizardly twists and turns of their own.