More than seventy years after D. H. Lawrence made his "savage pilgrimage" to New Mexico, British twenty-something Henry Shukman set off on his own journey there, in search of the spirit of Lawrence, the rugged and enigmatic beauty of the American Southwest, and answers to questions of love and life. His New Mexico quest takes him to dusty roadside gas stations, cheap Mexican restaurants, and ancient Indian pueblos, and he crosses paths with amiable cowboys and lonesome cowgirls, a plane-flying priest, more than one romantically inclined stranger, and a barroom philosopher at every stop. He's not afraid to strip naked to join strange men in an open-air hot tub, nor is he intimidated by salsa dancing at the Red Dog Saloon. As he finds himself in towns called Truth or Consequence, or just driving along the magical New Mexico roads, his journey becomes one of self-discovery - in the end, he finds exactly what he is searching for in the dusty town of Las Vegas, New Mexico.

"[Shukman] explores a little-known piece of Jewish history, in a sequence of poems that forms the centrepiece of this book. In 1917 several thousand Jewish tailors were deported from London and shipped back to Archangel and the Russian Empire they had recently fled, ostensibly to fight on the Eastern Front. They arrived just as the Revolution was unfolding and the old regime was collapsing into chaos. Among them were Shukman's grandfather and great-uncle, and these poems chronicle their four-year struggle to return to their wives and children in London. ..."--Book flap.