Rising from the Ruins

Personal choice and historical discovery are at the center of this absorbing novel, which, unlike Peters's pre-Columbian trilogy (The Luck of Huemac, Tikal and The Incas), is set in the present: at an archeological dig in Mexico, near the Guatemalan border. Harp Tyler, a writer looking for a job, accepts an offer from an old friend and goes to help excavate the Mayan city of Baktun, which somehow survived the general collapse that destroyed its pre-Columbian neighbors. Harp wants to use Baktun as the subject for a novel, but he's facing a general collapse of his own. His marriage is teetering, and his wife, Caroline, has some momentous choices to make. Peters is working themes of revitalization: as the dig team constructs a human story out of objects from the past, Harp confronts the choices that bear on his own future. Throughout, Peters skillfully grounds Harp's journey of self-discovery in the mundane, grueling details of the archeological dig. And the plot, with its layers of history, has a fullness to it, as do the lively characters. Harp, the imaginative joker in this deck of fact-finding researchers, comes to Baktun to retreat from the real world. But by the end of the novel, the real world, in the form of indigenous tribesmen echoing the unhappy past of Baktun, invades the dig and can't be ignored. The deeper you dig into this rewarding novel, the better it becomes. (Mar.)