THE AURORA REVELATIONS

Walker’s novel charts the enigmatic disappearance of a prominent paranormal researcher and podcaster during a road trip visiting America’s most bizarre and mysterious landmarks.

In a New Mexico national park that serves as a New Age/occult-enthusiast destination, a bloodied, dazed man is found by a tour guide. The man’s backpack holds a strange scrapbook of printed transcripts, blogposts, e-mails, texts, short stories, old articles, and other miscellany that, arranged in rough chronological order, shape-shifts into a wild yarn spanning the summer of 2015. During an epidemic of suicides as more and more Americans just start giving up and becoming zombie-like unhoused people, paranormal podcaster and webmaster Kevin Starkly gathers long-standing friends and weirdness enthusiasts (the “Nerd Legion”) for a road trip visiting the nation’s landmarks linked to UFOs, ghosts, and monsters. In the New Jersey Pine Barrens (the domain of the legendary Jersey Devil), Kevin vanishes, surrounded by blue lights. Spurred by the urgency to solve Kevin’s disappearance (or simply playing along with his game), the remaining teammates and some satellite associates travel onward to an alien-abductee convention in Ohio’s Indian-mound country, the remnants of Nikola Tesla’s workshops, and an alleged 1897 crash (and burial) site of a “spaceman” in Aurora, Texas. Murder, menace, and bizarre occurrences proliferate in a fragmented plotline that is part Blair Witch Project and part Up the Down Staircase. The material speaks uncannily well to those familiar with late-night conspiracy radio and dubious volumes by Whitley Strieber—the narrative is a neat intertwining of fiction with actual Forteana lore (“I suggest a detour to the famous Mystery Hill here in North Salem, NH. Always some strange rituals taking place around here especially by the Sacrificial Table”). Walker pulls an amazing aggregation of borderline satire and surreal terror into a coherent and spooky whole; Neil Gaiman’s American Gods (2001) occasionally springs to mind, which is no small praise.

A supernaturally effective oddity odyssey.