Mojave Madness

Wendell Camp is a bitter man who believes his life in meaningless. After losing his wife and stillborn child, he figures God had deserted him. His sister, Tricia, can't convince him otherwise. His good buddy, Diego, tells him of a ton of gold lost in a quake near Muffin Mountain during the Civil War. Diego hopes to unearth the gold to help the children of the orphanage he was raised in. Diego leaves for Baja, California to search for the bandito who killed his parents. He intends to kill him. Billie Bob Budd and his wife Beth snugly up on their Salvation Army couch and watch, from their twelve dollar shack with a view, as a land developer stakes out plots of land below. "Ain't no way in hell I'm gonna let that happen." Tricia opens the door to room twelve and finds a dead man with his head bashed in. The only person who has a clue as to what happened is her aged mother who is in the first stages of Alzheimer's. As the story climaxes, Wendell has to race the town bully, Duane Murphy, to the top of Muffin Mountain in the annual Sisyphus Race. Duane will stop at nothing, including crippling Wendell, to triumph. While training for the race, Wendell finds he has more in common with Luce Anne Meeks, than running in the desert.