Set in northern California in 1984, this novel follows Zoyd Wheeler, an aging hippie, and his teenage daughter Prairie, whose mother disappeared years before. A federal agent from Zoyd's past returns, and old political battles of the 1960s start to resurface. The book moves between family life, pop culture, television and the shadow of government power. It is funny and sad, a gentler Pynchon novel about how the idealism of one generation meets the surveillance and compromise that followed.