Speckled Vanities

Indian Springs, Nevada (pop 991), at the edge of the Mojave, is "downtown" to three institutions:


— Creech Air Force Base, home to drone operators in their air-conditioned trailers,

— High Desert State Prison, Nevada's largest, newest, and most modern, and

— the Sekhmet Temple of Goddess Spirituality, a women's community in the desert.


All three are concerned with violence against women.


This remarkable combination is the setting for some very confused relations among four protagonists, in a plot modeled on Cervantes and Goethe. They are all musicians, and music maps their gnarly way throughout.