The Celeste Experiment

Michael's wife Celeste is dying, and modern medicine cannot save her. He turns to religion, which fails to cure her as well, and he is left with grief and no answers. That grief hardens into anger and determination, and finally into a plan: a carefully designed experiment to get to the truth about one of the most contested subjects in human history, the idea of God.

The experiment depends on Hamida Begum, a young woman of depth and intelligence who is heir to a lost lineage. She has been chosen and prepared, and she turns out to be qualified in ways Michael never expected. Whether her part in this sprawling, mysterious and at times unethical undertaking will bring him any resolution is the question that drives the book.

The Celeste Experiment is a literary novel with a touch of magical realism. It follows one man's attempt to cut through the spiritual threads running through history, and the story moves across the world. Revenge and conviction, sorrow and rage, design and entrapment all run through it, along with the power of whispered words. In the end it is a story in which almost nothing is vindicated except love.