Almost a year after settling down in Oregon, Coyote embarks on a cross-country road trip with her dad to scatter her mom's ashes, but the journey takes an unexpected turn when she realizes the secret to the chosen resting place lies in a lost book.

A meditation on literary craft that muses on how and why novels communicate with readers. Shows how fiction operates, exploring the conventions of form, the novel as a house that one must build brick by brick, and the objects and characters that build out the world of the novel. The author uses his own line drawings to portray the ebb and flow of novels. He considers how writers invent or discover their characters, the importance or unimportance...