FORTHCOMING:

The Dream Mine

Shortly after arriving in the rural valley where I now live I noticed an unusual building stepping down the hillside, all concrete and glass--quite out of place among the surrounding orchards and alfalfa fields. I asked the locals what it was. The answer took me down a rabbit hole of American history far deeper and stranger than I could have imagined. I found desert seers and frontier swindlers. A mysterious girl with a Ouija board, an itinerant phrenologist, and a trapper buried under a pile of gold bars in a badger cave. A Ponzi scheme run by polygamist outlaws with bills stuffed in their boots. A spirit medium who attempted for months to reanimate the corpse of one of her followers. A UFO that came all the way across the galaxy to Spanish Fork, Utah, only to turn around because of bad weather. I discovered society ladies hawking mine stock and speaking in tongues. I walked into a bank vault containing a pile of human teeth. And I encountered doomsday preppers whose apocalyptic enthusiasm never diminishes, no matter how many last days come and go. “That building, up on the hill? Oh, that’s the Dream Mine.”

Around the turn of the 20th c. a strange phenomenon emerged in the American West: people started having dreams in which mysterious figures showed them secret goldmines in nearby hills. Some of these "dreamers" dug in vain for years. The most notorious, "Bishop" John Koyle, not only dug, but convinced thousands to buy stock in his venture. Despite disappointment and derision, religious opposition, and repeated investigations for securities fraud, Koyle and his followers remained undeterred. In fact, even today, 75 years after Koyle's death, many still gather for an annual shareholder meeting. And every year the mine officers report that their strange building on the hillside, erected in the 1930s to process ore from Koyle's mine, has yet to produce even a single ounce of gold. Dreams are not just the provenance of Koyle's mine. They are, so far, its only product.

The Dream Mine is a nonfiction novel combining history, biography, investigation, real-life diaries, news clippings, legal documents, sermons, personal letters, and the magical realism of fantastical dreams.

I am currently seeking representation for the publication of The Dream Mine. A completed draft manuscript running some 42 chapters and 120,000 words is available for examination by literary agents and publishers.