Actual Star

<p><strong>David Mitchell's <em>Cloud Atlas</em> meets Octavia Butler's Earthseed series as acclaimed author Monica Byrne (<em>The Girl in the Road</em>) crafts an unforgettable piece of speculative fiction about where humanity came from where we are now and where we're going--and how in every age the same forces that drive us apart also bind us together.</strong></p><p><strong>A stone-cold masterpiece.--<em>New Scientist</em></strong></p><p><em>The Actual Star</em> takes readers on a journey over two millennia and six continents--telling three powerful tales a thousand years apart all of them converging in the same cave in the Belizean jungle.</p><p>Braided together are the stories of a pair of teenage twins who ascend the throne of a Maya kingdom; a young American woman on a trip of self-discovery in Belize; and two dangerous charismatics vying for the leadership of a new religion racing toward a confrontation that will determine the fate of the few humans left on Earth after massive climate change.</p><p>In each era a reincarnated trinity of souls navigates the entanglements of tradition and progress sister and stranger and love and hate--until all of their age-old questions about the nature of existence converge deep underground where only in complete darkness can they truly see.</p>