To Swim Beneath the Earth

Description

Megan Kimsey, born and raised in a small Colorado town on the edge of the La Plata Mountains, grows up haunted by images. Straddling cryptic glimpses of events that foretell her own future, and events remembered from a past in the highlands of Ecuador and Peru more than 400 years before she was born, she must challenge her Catholic upbringing and the stigma of a mental breakdown following a childhood tragedy, before she can strike out on a quest for meaning.

Megan’s story shifts between present tense and flashbacks that recount her nervous breakdown and grief, when, as a teenager, a child she loves freezes to death on the family’s front porch. And later, when her father, the one person who believes her strange visions aren’t hallucinations, dies in a hit-and-run accident. His death and the belated birthday gift he leaves for her launch her on a quest to face her phantoms and piece together the riddles in her dreams.

Megan’s journey leads her to South America and an expedition among the remnants of the Inca Empire, and finally, to a wind-swept outcropping high atop Cotopaxi Mountain in search of the frozen child she sees in her dreams. Accompanied by a team of archeologists and an indigenous woman of wisdom who becomes her mentor and guide, Megan must confront her ghosts and claim her own redemption.

“A woman discovers that she’s the reincarnated spirit of an Inca warrior in this imaginative debut novel . . . An often elegantly crafted story that explores the love between parents and their children.” —Kirkus Reviews