sanguma
Everybody believes, from the Prime Minister to the barman. And the things people do . . . you wouldn’t believe me if I told you.
Sanguma is available to agents and publishers
At heart Sanguma is a plot-driven, 78,000-word adventure thriller inspired by the moral ambiguity of Deliverance and The Mosquito Coast. As the story unfolds and the tension rises, it increasingly conjures elements of supernatural horror a la Rosemary’s Baby. Contemporary comps might include The Ruins.
Following in their professor’s footsteps, two promising young researchers—Sam Barker, a biologist, and his wife Claire, a botanist—have journeyed across the earth to the remote village of Nawan, high in Papua New Guinea’s Sarawaget Range. This expedition should be the adventure of their lives, a chance to realize academic ambitions and grow closer as a pair. But when tragedy strikes in the form of a landslide, Claire is accused of witchcraft by a dead man’s widow and sentenced to cleansing. As fear and suspicion rage through the village, the powerful leading family is overthrown, and long-held secrets unravel. Into the chaos steps the Sanguma—the sorcerer. As rumors and scandal swirl, and punishment unfolds in plain daylight, the reader begins to suspect there may be more truth to the allegations than Sam or Claire knew. Something foreign is growing inside her. Will it be her salvation, or her sentencing? Sam must believe in her, do everything he can to save them both. And he must hope that someone, anyone, will help.
Unfolding in Indigenous villages bereft of the comforts Claire and Sam would be used to, and across the surrounding peaks and gorges, high-altitude base camp, and endless, claustrophobic forest, Sanguma forces the reader to consider what is more frightening: the possible existence of violent sorcery in the real world, or the violence normal people will commit in the name of exterminating it? It deals with colonial and missionary culture, science in conflict with religion, bigotry, xenophobia, sex and power, and the general ugliness just beneath natural and cultural beauty. In Sanguma, the reader will question what is real, what is possible, and what is paranoia?
Sanguma is my first novel.
I spent four years on research expeditions in Papua New Guinea much like the one our protagonists are trying to survive. I speak New Guinean Tok Pisin (and understand Australians).
I have worked with Indigenous and local communities for the past twenty years and these amazing people have always stoked my curiosity and imagination. I am incredibly grateful to them and especially to my friends in PNG who have read Sanguma and appear to be as excited as I am for it.