Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah

Richard, a barnstorming pilot drifting across the rural Midwest, meets Donald Shimoda, a former mechanic who once worked miracles before quitting the messiah business. Shimoda takes Richard on as a student, and over a handful of summer days he shows him that crowds, illness, gravity, and even death are agreements the mind can choose to release. Between the lessons, Bach folds in pages from a small "Messiah's Handbook" that the reader is invited to open at random. The two men barnstorm, argue, and test the edges of what a person can will into being, until a violent turn forces Richard to decide whether he believes any of it.