Theodore Street is driving towards the ocean where he plans to drown himself. But, on the way, he is hit by a van and he sails through the windscreen, his head sliced from his body. At his funeral days later, he sits up in his coffin, apparently resurrected. Theodore becomes an object of derision and morbid curiosity to the press, a prized specimen for scientists and Satan incarnate to an obscure religious cult deep in the desert. Fascinating, surreal, and wildly satirical, Percival Everett sends up the press, religion, UFOs and the military, and offers a meditation on what it is to be alive.

This novel by Percival Everett explores the consequences of hatred, ignorance and division against the background of the wide, high desert of Wyoming.