American Rust by Philipp Meyer

He continued heading south.  The tracks passed through a wide meadow and the night was clear and black and the stars stretched down to the horizon.  Billions of them out there, all around us, an ocean of them, you're right in the middle.  There's your God -- star particles.  Come from and go back.  Star becomes earth becomes man becomes God.  Your mother becomes river becomes ocean. Becomes rain.  You can forgive someone who is dead.  He had a sense of something draining out of him, down his head and neck and the rest of his body, like stepping out of a skin.