Brilliantly chronicles the occasionally bizarre, unceasingly turbulent existence of the geographically and emotionally displaced.

"Beltran Soler is from Chile, a land in constant movement. A seismologist who knows more about the science of tectonic plate movement than about life, he is cocooned in a world of seismic data, scientific articles, and natural disasters. Beltran believes he can protect himself from the world around him by losing himself to theoretical pursuits, but thousands of feet above the ground he so meticulously analyzes, on a flight to L.A. - the capital of...