A Land without Sin, by Paula Huston

Last year, Image magazine founder Gregory Wolfe launched a literary imprint at Wipf & Stock called Slant, aiming to publish fiction unafraid of metaphysical themes. Paula Huston’s novel, one of the first to come out, features Eva, a cynical but intrepid photographer who travels to Mexico in search of her lost brother, Stefan. He is a priest in a small village and has gone missing in the midst of a political conflict be­tween wealthy landowners and the indigenous people. As Eva tries to pick up clues to her brother’s fate, she finds that she is searching for her own missing heart and a purpose in life. The book’s quest takes the reader through Mayan ruins and the jungles of southern Mexico in search of several kinds of transformation.