The Gatepost

From the author of The Afterlife Project: One woman's quest to find her father pushes her beyond the boundaries of space, time, and the human mind.

Esme Weatherhead was twelve years old when her father, an amateur scientist and the author of a bestselling book on Mesoamerican shamanism, walked into the forest on their rural Vermont property and never came back. Twenty years later, she quit her job in San Francisco, got divorced, and moved back home with the goal of writing a book about her father's life and sudden vanishing.

In the course of her research, Esme uncovers an old field journal that describes a cave on the property she hadn't known about, experiments involving high doses of psilocybin mushrooms, and a series of strangely vivid hallucinations. After searching unsuccessfully for the cave, she hires Lucas St. Pierre, a local geologist, to help her find it.

Now, as they work to unravel the mystery of her father's disappearance, Esme and Lucas must confront hidden forces that will test their sanity and put their safety at risk, ultimately leading to new insights about love, death, and the enduring resilience of life on Earth.

Perfect for fans of Susanna Clarke's Piranesi, Emily St. John Mandel's Sea of Tranquility, and Richard Powers's Bewilderment, Tim Weed's The Gatepost blends modern science and ancient cosmology to take readers on a journey offering hallucinatory glimpses into worlds beyond our own.

Tim Weed is the author of The Gatepost, A Field Guide to Murder & Fly Fishing, Will Poole's Island, and The Afterlife Project, which was named a best book of 2025 by Library Journal and the Toronto Star. He serves on the core faculty of the Newport MFA for creative writing and is the cofounder of the Cuba Writers Program. Weed spent the first part of his career leading educational travel programs around the globe and was a featured expert for National Geographic Expeditions. He lives in rural Vermont with his family and three disobedient cats. To learn more, visit www.timweed.net.