Gods Without Men

In 2008, Jaswinder (Jaz) Singh Matharu, MIT grad and the rebellious Baltimore-bred son of a Punjabi family, heads to the Southwest with Jewish American wife Lisa and autistic son Raj. Along with drug-hazed London rocker Nicky Capaldi, to whom Raj takes a shine, they find themselves stuck (and coming unstuck) at a motel in a beautifully barren area where, we learn in multiple date-marked chapters, Fray Garcés managed a mission (1778), Mormons murdered intruders (1871), the disaffected Schmidt seems to have seen a spaceship (1947), a community believing in extraterrestrials gathered (1958), a hippie commune emerged (1969), and, significantly, an ethnologist studying the disappearing Natives saw an Indian man walking with a ghostly white child (1920). Woven throughout is the tale of Coyote, who risks all to visit the Land of the Dead, and as time collapses and the multiple stories coalesce, Raj disappears.