Asie Taylor is a half-blood Indian raised by Mormons, a gifted musician and a sharp-tongued philosopher; Sun Moon is a Tibetan nun who has been kidnapped and sold into prostitution in California. Each is on the run--Asie toward his heritage and the secret of his "Rock Child" name, Sun Moon from her captors, in particular the fanatical "Destroying Angel" of Mormondon, Porter Rockwell.

The fate of these two innocents takes its strangest turn when they are thrown together with a man innocent of nothing, the scar-faced Nile explorer Sir Richard Burton who in 1862 is making his leisurely way across the American West.

The journey of this remarkable trio, their footsteps dogged by the relentless Rockwell, ranges from Brigham Young's Salt Lake City through the mining camps of the Comstock Lode in Nevada (where a reporter named Sam Clemens befriends them) is a dazzling tour-de-force adventure.