What if death wasn’t the end—but only a border? And what if
someone found a way to cross it?
Dr. Wisteria Vanish, a trauma psychologist grappling with unbearable grief, is drawn to the remote desert town of Todos Santos, Mexico, where whispers of resurrection swirl around a rogue military medic. In an underground lab carved from ancient stone, the dead stir—but what returns may not be human. Available now on Amazon.com
Todos Santos is a philosophical literary science fiction novel that follows Wisteria Vanish, a trauma psychologist and former competitive swimmer reeling from the loss of her husband, David, who was killed by an IED in Afghanistan. When a mysterious biotech defense contractor, VitaNuova, contacts her with a shocking proposal—to investigate a rogue scientist in Baja California who may have found a way to reverse death—Wisteria reluctantly accepts, drawn by both professional curiosity and personal longing.
The journey takes her from Norman, Oklahoma through the
haunted landscapes of the Texas Panhandle and into the deserts of Baja
California, Mexico. There she meets Dr. Holdsby Asher, a former Army medic
turned controversial researcher operating out of an abandoned silver mine. His
reanimation experiments blur the lines between life and death, resulting in
disturbing partial resurrections: biologically functional beings without
apparent consciousness.
As Wisteria becomes immersed in Holdsby’s world of ethical
ambiguity and scientific obsession, she also connects with Maria Bentley, a
hotelier and former pharmaceutical researcher, and Elena, a once-dead
trafficking victim who regains agency and becomes a symbol of consciousness
evolution. Together, they confront the implications of Holdsby’s work—and the
darker motives of VitaNuova, who seeks military applications for the
technology.
Through a series of morally fraught encounters, Wisteria is
forced to choose between complicity in a terrifying future or becoming a bridge
to new understandings of grief, healing, and being. Her poetic reflections on
trauma, memory, and identity deepen as she explores the “spaces between” death
and resurrection—not only in others, but within herself.
Structured in four parts—Descent, Darkness, Transformation, and Resurrection—the novel foregrounds themes such as Julia Kristeva’s concept of abjection, the existential dilemmas posed by Sartre and Camus, and Berger and Luckmann’s social construction of reality. It interrogates the meaning of consciousness, identity, and personhood through the reanimation of partially conscious bodies and the corporate desire to militarize immortality.
With its haunting desert setting, philosophical
underpinnings drawn from existentialism, social construction theory, and
Kristeva’s abjection, Todos Santos is a meditation on what it means to
be alive, to grieve, and to evolve. Ultimately, it is a story of
resurrection—both literal and metaphorical—and the dangerous, liberating, and
deeply human desire to bring the dead back, if only to say goodbye.
Interested in writing a review? Let me know and I'll send you a galley proof ... Thank you in advance!
