The title, "Lord of Obstacles" is taken from the Indian elephant diety, Ganesh, The Lord of Obstacles. The story centers around a young man who sustains a traumatic brain injury during the Gulf War and now works as a freelance writer and researcher in Seattle. He is given an assignment to interview and document the case of an eleven year-old girl who awoke from a long-term vegetative coma following brain surgery and now has exact memories belonging to someone long dead and with no apparent connection to her or her family. She cannot remember her own identity but has found an 'imaginary' friend and advisor with whom she is in contact with only during sleep. The mystery develops around the search for an explanation to the girl's strange, alternate identity and her mysterious friend, a young Indian woman named Deepa Vyas who has become the girl's trusted spiritual guide and who functions within the mysterious void between life and death. The action moves to Southern India in an effort to help bring the child safely back to her own world.