Growing up in Laguna Beach, Matt Anthony is used to the surfer/hippy vibe of his town, where Timothy Leary holds forth on the value of dropping acid and dropping out, a spiritual guru has established a retreat for enlightenment at the site of a former college, and Matt is doing his best to earn a few bucks delivering papers on his bike and supplement his meager food budget by fishing in the surf. His father, an ex-cop, is absent and his mother's weed habit is getting worse. Then Matt's sister vanishes just as the body of a girl is found on the beach. The cops don't seem very interested in his sister's fate, thinking she's just another runaway, so it's up to Matt to find her, enlisting along the way the help of a girl he's long admired and finally had the nerve to approach. returnreturnHe has a few leads, thanks to his volunteer work at a head shop where its owner believes LSD will revolutionize society (though regular run-ins with local cops and threats from a new biker gang are complicating things), a visit to the guru's retreat (free food!), and a clandestine trip to see what goes on at a notorious party house where his sister may have been spotted. As the days pass, he grows more desperate and determined. returnreturnParker vividly evokes a moment in time at the place he calls home, with the "thousand steps" of the title a real set of steps leading to the beach, but also a metaphor for young Matt's dogged search. Matt is a fine guide to the confusing and often destructive tidal currents of the 1968 drug-drenched search-for-enlightenment scene.