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This is a story of Lolita Firestone and Miles Zusman, a woman who finds her place in life, and a man who would become her unofficial biographer. It is also a geographic tale, one that could never have come to pass if not for its geographic pinpoint in the dead-center of the State of Arizona in a small city called Sedona, a town that many years ago was named after a young woman named Sedona Schnebly, wife of T.C. Schnebly, who together built a large two-story home that also served as the area’s first hotel and general store.

Lolita was a struggling Hollywood actress on the cusp of something astonishing. Miles was lost within his own fraudulent storyline, an aspiring politician who was preparing himself to run for a seat in the Arizona Legislature, though he dreamed of eventually becoming Governor and then U.S. Senator. He had served one term on the Harrisburg, Pennsylvania City Council and failed to win reelection. He was full of secrets.

Both Miles and Lolita wanted to lead people.

They arrived as vacationers in Sedona, Arizona within one week of each other and Lolita instantly knew she was “home” and would never leave. Miles never seemed to be certain about anything.

*******

It was an unspoken agreement among the 30,000 residents of Sedona to never speak ill of their community. Bad things happened to people who said bad things about Sedona. It was, after all, a land considered sacred by the Native Americans that once populated area. Tribal ruins were still in evidence.

No one would have lived in Sedona if the sluggish National Park Service had acted more quickly or had been more lavishly funded by the United States Congress. With its amazing array of soaring red rock formations, it should have been a national park. By the time this dawned on the people running the National Park Service, too much of the territory was already in the hands of private landowners and the agency didn’t have a large enough checkbook to buy their properties and turn the red rocks into a national preserve. Over the years Sedona flourished on its own accord and turned into a community dominated by five groups: retirees, tourists, real estate agents, artists and those who believed in the New Age (a movement characterized by alternative approaches to Western culture, with an interest in spirituality, mysticism and all things holistic).

*******

Miles Zusman had been masquerading as a Christian for years. To claim anything other than a feverish belief in the Bible and membership in the holy and apostolic church was a huge handicap for most American politicians. To be a member of any other religion — with the possible exception of Judaism — was an instant disqualifier. So was atheism. Especially atheism. So, he pretended to believe in God, and only one God, and only the Christian interpretation of God. To be anything else would have been political self-immolation.

He determined that Arizona was a place where the politically inclined could make a very quick impact and climb the well-oiled apparatus of the Republican Party Machine.

*******

Lolita Firestone estimated that 50 percent of the 30,000 people living in Sedona fancied themselves healers, psychics or possessors of telepathic powers of some kind. It was a ready audience for the eventual Lolita Firestone/Miles Zusman compact.

*******

Lolita and Miles met at a drum circle organized on the banks of Oak Creek, the community’s sole waterway. They beat rhythms and wailed Navajo and Hopi tribal hymns. After herbal tea was served, Lolita Firestone started talking and everyone started listening. The cult of personality had already begun to coalesce.

*******

To the spiritually inclined, Sedona was famous for its seven Vortexes at geologic locations with names such as Bell Rock, Cathedral Rock, Boynton Canyon and Airport Mesa. The Vortexes were electromagnetic high-energy centers that many locals considered portals into higher realms of consciousness.

Others considered the Vortexes figments of gullible people’s imaginations.

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As has already been disclosed, Miles Zusman had secrets. It’s not just that he was an atheist pretending to be a Christian for political expediency, he was also homosexual, and that fact was kept squarely in a closet as impenetrable as a bomb shelter. He was a self-loathing homosexual, too, which was one of two reasons why he always used the term homosexual rather than gay. The second reason was that, as an arch conservative, he wanted to publicly show his distaste for the sexual preference, which he considered perverse. To call a person or group homosexual was to cast a harsh light on their behavior and made plain where one resided on the political spectrum. What’s more, it gave Miles’ own homosexual nature additional cover. Not that he really needed it. The people around Miles had not an inkling of his true nature, because he was not the least bit effeminate. That would have been another death knell for his career as an elected official, especially now that he was in Arizona, which still regarded most forms of gay and lesbian sex as sodomy punishable by a stint in the state prison system. Arizona’s sodomy laws were rarely enforced, but they were kept in the penal code to communicate the revulsion with which the land’s residents regarded boy-on-boy and girl-on-girl sexual entanglements. You never knew when a sodomy law might be enforced as an excuse to incarcerate a person guilty of a higher crime or misdemeanor the authorities lacked sufficient evidence to prosecute.

The need to suppress something so integral to his life put Miles Zusman under considerable pressure. One momentary lapse of discipline and he would have to re-create himself in a new image. This made him exceptionally envious of heterosexuals who were free to express themselves with complete candor and authenticity. He was especially envious of the free-spirited Lolita Firestone. He had never meant anyone more self-assured.

Miles Zusman worked hard at maintaining the masculine behavior that did not come naturally to him.

*******

Lolita Firestone moved into a small cabin in Oak Creek, where she communed with piles of books about the metaphysical nature of reality, a subject for which she harbored zero interest until she moved to Sedona. Her reading was interrupted by phone calls from an on-again/off-again boyfriend she left back in Hollywood. His name was Marco Choppo, and he was pleading for her return. As an act of devotion to their tepid relationship, Marco Choppo offered to come to Sedona so they could reunite.

She insisted that he not.

*******

Miles Zusman started walking around the Uptown Sedona shopping and tourism district, introducing himself to people as their future republican congressman representing the 1st Congressional District of Arizona. Never mind that there was no election pending, or that Miles wasn’t a registered candidate, or that Miles had not even been an Arizona resident long enough to qualify to register as a candidate. Miles believed in projecting and doing his groundwork early.

“My collateral material hasn’t been printed yet,” he told them, “so I don’t have a brochure to give you.”

*******

Miles updated his residential real estate license for the State of Arizona and started selling timeshares. Sedona was full of timeshares with names such as Los Abrigados, Club Wynham, Hyatt Pinon Pointe and Arroyo Roble.

*******

Each evening, as night fell, Lolita Firestone burned through stacks of books, all biographies of history’s greatest Far Eastern spiritual leaders, men who built great spirit-based organizations or movements, such as Paramahansa Yogananda, Si Baba, Sri Chinmoy, Swami Satchidananda and D.T. Suzuki.

She was trying to learn the foreign language spoken by the New Age people she had begun consorting with in Sedona. They talked about things Lolita has never heard of (such as the transmigration of the soul and astral projection) and places she had never been (such as the causal plane and the Akashic Hall of Records). She was learning quickly. Soon she was on her feet pacing the cabin, book in hand, reading highlighted passages aloud and memorizing the lines, much as she used to do with movie scripts for upcoming auditions.

She looked in the mirror and, for the first time, saw herself without illusion. Lolita knew in that moment she would discontinue drinking. No more bellinis. No more martinis. No more vodka.

Hers was going to be a life about self-conquest.

*******

Everything that Lolita Firestone did since arriving in Sedona, Arizona was done with higher energy and to greater effect. On the few occasions she ventured away from the red rocks and the Vortexes, the energy reduction was almost immediate. That is when Lolita Firestone realized she was living in captivity.

*******

Sedona was small, so Lolita Firestone and Miles Zusman kept running into one another about town and would recess to a café for beverages. Lolita would start spouting metaphysics with all the brio of the actress she was.

Miles, the atheist, barely believed a word of it, and yet he was enthralled nonetheless because Lolita communicated with such conviction and clarity, the words flowing as though being played through a soprano saxophone. Miles fancied himself an excellent communicator and public speaker, but Lolita was a...