RESURGENCE

In Camponeschi’s debut novel, a lost young man finds community at a remote health institute.

Twenty-three-year-old Will Moretti has just lost his best friend, Rich, to suicide. Rich had suffered from juvenile diabetes, and while Will is sifting through Rich’s things, he discovers a brochure for a New Age health camp in Arizona that Rich’s parents had been encouraging him to attend. Will decides to travel to the camp himself—he’s been in a rut since college ended, and he’s hoping to find some closure regarding Rich’s death. He takes a job as an assistant chef in the camp’s kitchen while simultaneously taking classes and even joining the camp’s lacrosse team. Despite the summer camp atmosphere, the teaching all revolves, curiously, around blood. “Blood is a magical substance that has appeared throughout human history as a sacred religious symbol,” explains Will’s instructor, Juan. “It supplies the fuel you need to survive, and as I’m sure you’re well aware, the loss of too much blood means our bodies cannot survive.” Does blood really hold the secret, not only to good health but to spiritual fulfillment? Surrounded by an assortment of colorful oddballs—and several women who get his blood pumping in different ways—Will is about to find out. Camponeschi’s clean prose carries the reader through Will’s journey as a chef, seeker, and newly self-identifying Type O bearer: “His rising curiosity about what lay ahead had helped him overcome his aversion to being poked with a needle. As the nurse rubbed his left arm with alcohol, he turned his head and winced when she inserted the syringe.” The narrative is not especially plot-heavy, nor does it take the sinister direction that the reader may be expecting. Instead, the author offers a sincere and sometimes didactic exploration of grief, growth, and blood-forward theories of health. While sometimes intriguing, the story’s emotional basis is too thin to sustain the nearly 500-page length.

A slightly monotonous novel set at a blood-centric spa.