Todos Santos: Just published!
What if death wasn’t the end—but only a border? And what ifsomeone found a way to cross it?
Dr. Wisteria Vanish, a trauma psychologist grappling withunbearable grief, is drawn to the remote desert town of Todos Santos, Mexico,where whispers of resurrection swirl around a rogue military medic. In anunderground lab carved from ancient stone, the dead stir—but what returns maynot be human. Available now on Amazon.com
Todos Santos is a philosophical literary sciencefiction novel that follows Wisteria Vanish, a trauma psychologist and formercompetitive swimmer reeling from the loss of her husband, David, who was killedby an IED in Afghanistan. When a mysterious biotech defense contractor,VitaNuova, contacts her with a shocking proposal—to investigate a roguescientist in Baja California who may have found a way to reverse death—Wisteriareluctantly accepts, drawn by both professional curiosity and personal longing.
The journey takes her from Norman, Oklahoma through thehaunted landscapes of the Texas Panhandle and into the deserts of BajaCalifornia, Mexico. There she meets Dr. Holdsby Asher, a former Army medicturned controversial researcher operating out of an abandoned silver mine. Hisreanimation experiments blur the lines between life and death, resulting indisturbing partial resurrections: biologically functional beings withoutapparent consciousness.
As Wisteria becomes immersed in Holdsby’s world of ethicalambiguity and scientific obsession, she also connects with Maria Bentley, ahotelier and former pharmaceutical researcher, and Elena, a once-deadtrafficking victim who regains agency and becomes a symbol of consciousnessevolution. Together, they confront the implications of Holdsby’s work—and thedarker motives of VitaNuova, who seeks military applications for thetechnology.
Through a series of morally fraught encounters, Wisteria isforced to choose between complicity in a terrifying future or becoming a bridgeto new understandings of grief, healing, and being. Her poetic reflections ontrauma, memory, and identity deepen as she explores the “spaces between” deathand 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, philosophicalunderpinnings drawn from existentialism, social construction theory, andKristeva’s abjection, Todos Santos is a meditation on what it means tobe alive, to grieve, and to evolve. Ultimately, it is a story ofresurrection—both literal and metaphorical—and the dangerous, liberating, anddeeply 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!
