From the author of The Afterlife Project: One woman’s quest to find her vanished father pushes her beyond the boundaries of space, time, and the human mind.
Esme Weatherhead was twelve years old when her father, an amateur scientist and the author of a best-selling book on Mesoamerican shamanism, walked up into the forest on their rural Vermont property and never came back. Twenty years later she quits her job in San Francisco, gets divorced, and moves back to Vermont with the goal of writing a book about her father’s life and disappearance.
In the course of her research, Esme finds an old field journal referencing a cave on the property she hadn’t known about, a series of experiments involving high doses of psilocybin mushrooms, and a series of strangely vivid hallucinations. After searching unsuccessfully for the cave, she hires Lucas St. Pierre, a local geologist, to help her find it. As they try to unravel the truth of her father’s disappearance, Esme and Lucas confront hidden forces that will test their sanity and put their lives at risk, leading to new insights about love, death, and the hidden secrets of life on earth.
Perfect for fans of Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi, Emily St John Mandel’s Sea of Tranquility, and Richard Powers’ Bewilderment, Tim Weed’s The Gatepost blends modern science and ancient cosmology to take readers on a journey offering hallucinatory glimpses into worlds beyond our own.
"This well-researched tale is sure to entertain.” — Publisher’s Weekly
“A compellingly trippy journey.” —Kirkus Reviews
“A wild, luminous ride.” — Crystal King, bestselling author of The Happiness Collector
