Prologue

Two years hadn’t dulled the pain. If anything, the hole in her soul had grown bigger. Holly didn’t think she could miss her father any more than she already did, but being this far away from home made the memories of him feel fuzzier, his absence more acute.

What am I doing here with all these old burnt-out hippies and weirdos?

Holly resented her grandfather for dragging her to this primeval Peruvian jungle, five thousand miles from home. But even the struggling eighteen-year-old realized he had only acted out of love and concern.

Holly had been in a downward spiral ever since the accident. Her grades had plummeted. She was disconnected from the few friends who had stuck with her through her grief. And life alone in the house with her melancholic and withdrawn mom felt more like living in a tomb. More than once, Holly had eyed the bottles lining her mother’s medicine cabinet, imagining what a relief it would be to just swallow all the pills.

“Trust me, Koala,” her grandfather had promised her with a sad smile as they boarded the plane for Lima. “This will help you.”

But this was his world, not hers. Everything about it felt foreign to Holly. At times, nightmarish. The twisted tangle of branches forming such a thick canopy that Holly couldn’t see the sky. The constant hums, thrums, buzzes, and chirps. Even the smells—a combination of vegetation, moisture, soil, and decay—made her want to puke. It all gave her the unsettling sense of being just another rung on the food chain of the living ecosystem that engulfed her.

Holly was the youngest one on the retreat by at least fifteen years. She had been mortified that first morning when she had to shed her clothes and immerse herself in the communal plant bath—basically just a deeper pool in the muddy stream that ran beside their encampment—in front of all the other women in the group. And she found the ceremony that followed it on the dirt floor of that weird circular hut, with its smelly inhalants, purgatives, and poultices, to be just as unnerving.

None of this mystic bullshit will bring Dad back. Or make me any less responsible for what happened to him.

That evening, the group gathered after dusk in the clearing for what would become a nightly ritual. By the time Holly sat down with the others around the roaring fire, she could feel the panic welling inside her chest. Sensing her growing distress, her grandfather reached over and gently took her hand in his, giving it a reassuring squeeze. That helped for a while. Then the kettle dangling above the dancing flames began to hiss, and the bitter, acrid stench of the special tea brewing inside turned her stomach and reignited her apprehension.

As she reluctantly brought the clay cup to her lips for the first time, feeling nothing but dread and regret, Holly would have never guessed that her life was about to be transformed.