Tom Robbins takes on Middle Eastern politics and the frenzy of the millenium, seen through the eyes of a silver dessert spoon, a can of pork-n-beans, a dirty sock, a sacred conch shell and a centuries-old painted stick. At least partly. Robbins spends the rest of the novel mocking the New York City art scene, expounding his theories on Goddess religion and Biblical lore, and mixing up a grab-bag of Southern-fried religion and ethnic entrepreneurship. The action revolves around Ellen Cherry Charles and Boomer Petway, newlyweds en route from Seattle to the art scene of New York City in an Airstream turkey. Unfortunately, art doesn't bode well for the couple, and wedded bliss soon becomes a wedded mess. Boomer runs off to Jerusalem, where he can weld to his heart's content, while Ellen Cherry takes up waitressing at Isaac and Ishmael's, a restaurant owned by an Arab and a Jew. (Talk about bad ethnic jokes!). But the fun doesn't stop there. Events begin to escalate when a pock-faced Virginian evangelist, intent on rebuilding the Third Temple and ushering in the Second Coming (even if he has to do it by himself), comes to town, and a young Middle-Eastern nursing student named Salome bumps and grinds to the mind-altering Dance of the Seven Veils. In fact, New York City may become more of a war zone than the Holy City itself.