Signposts in a Strange Land is a work for string quartet inspired by native Alabama author Walker Percy. Percy's humorously existential novels usually center around a character living with a sense of loss of identity and moral direction; a Southerner trapped in the basement of a New York department store and a real estate agent searching for the meaning of life in the movie houses of New Orleans are two such characters. The String Quartet captures the searching, groping quality inherent in Percy's characters, and like these characters, culminates in moments of revelation and self-definition.