Ben, a cynical graduate student in anthropology at a major Midwest university in 1981, inherits the "back room" desk in the teacher's assistants' office after a fellow graduate student, Lacey, leaves the department after a psychological breakdown. On opening the desk, he finds letters both to and from her former boyfriend, Steven, who was killed in a battle between his field-work people, the Huichols of the Mexican Sierra Madre mountains, and an emerging cartel of drug growers and trafficers. Unable to resist, he begins reading the letters, discovering both the problems of the relationship and embarrassing news about his fellow students and professors. He also discovers that Steven and Lacey were having deep conversations about the existence of God and the meaning of life, both scorned by Ben's materialistic beliefs. But then things begin to happen; because of the letters, he becomes involved with another graduate student, Suzanne, with whom he develops an uneasy relationship that leads to a romantic encounter and a pregnancy. More and more, he begins to realize that his life and this affair with Suzanne are both being influenced somehow by the events uncovered in the letters. After correspondence with a doctor who had gotten to know Steven through his medical and evangelical work in the Sierras, he is shocked to find that his life is not only being influenced by these events from the past, but is being thoroughly altered as if by sources beyond the material realm. This leads him to a shocking and unexpected epiphany that overwhleming changes his life's trajectory and world view. This is a novel about cynicism, love, greed, violence and spirit. It shows us that, whether we see it or not, everything is being guided mysteriously by a force beyond our understanding and control. It tells us to open up, to have faith and trust, and most of all, to have hope, as told through the adventures of extremely diverse characters both here and in an exotic world few of us will ever experience. .
