The Gatepost

Twenty years before the start of this spellbinder from Weed (The Afterlife Project), Professor Gregory Weatherhead, an expert in Mesoamerican shamanism, disappeared from his home in Vermont. Now, his daughter, Esme, is struggling to write a book about him. Convinced the disappearance is connected to a cave Weatherhead discovered on his property, she hires geologist Lucas St. Pierre to find the site. An old field journal also reveals that just before he vanished, Weatherhead had been experimenting with psilocybin mushrooms and recording his hallucinations of environs (“Blue sky, no clouds, smell of pine needles, rosemary, sunbaked earth”) and feathered serpents (“Quetzalcoatl???”). The journal makes cryptic reference to the cave containing a “stela,” a ceremonial column often found on Mesoamerican archaeological sites believed to mark the entrance to the underworld. Suspecting her father may have crossed into this land beyond life, Esme decides to repeat his carefully documented mushroom dosing with Lucas’s help. Meanwhile, Sebastian Bonney, the former host of Discovery Channel’s Archaeology on the Edge, hopes to nab the stela for himself, leading to an Indiana Jones–style dash in the novel’s climax. Weed does a nice job interposing the present mystery with Weatherhead’s research in both Vermont and Oaxaca, and balances esoteric mysticism with touching contemporary detail. This well-researched tale is sure to entertain. (May)