SYNOPSIS OF THE LAKE OF THE FROGS TRILOGY

[With gratitude to Joseph Campbell]

Chapters I to X - Call to Adventure

The New York Times recently reported on the public's insatiable appetite for adolescent heroes with strange powers. Move over Harry Potter, Frodo, Peter Parker, and Luke Skywalker. Welcome Du. Those interested in Latin American hitory, alternative spirituality, frogs, and Indian folklore will want to read this book.

Sixteen years old, Du has the face, hands and feet of a frog. Six feet tall, over two hundred pounds, he swims fast as a fish and breathes underwater through his skin. When Du finds a metal box at the bottom of a secluded lake high in the Sierra Nevada mountains he unleashes an ancient curse. A ceaseless jungle rain begins to fall all over the Earth. Soon dams are breaking, crops drowning: cities, fields, even the deserts are being submerged in an apocalyptic deluge.

Inside the box is a tunjos, a magical talisman that holds the Jewels of Life, remnants of the comet that first brought life to Earth. The tunjos gives Du increased powers but also acts as a bridge to the celestial plane. Du is haunted by visions of his mother, witches, and terrifying vengeful gods.

More human than godlike, with superhuman powers, but without the supernatural knowledge to use them, how will a teen with the features of a frog make his way in a world he has only days to save? As Du laments, "How was I supposed to reach a mythical city in Latin America when I was not certain if I could find my way to the nearest town?"

To reach Manoa, Du must first find his mother. All he knows is that she gave to birth to him in a mental hospital in Oregon.

Leaving the lake and forest for the first time in his life, Du finds shelter in a household of musicians. Du discovers the tunjos gives him the power to change the way people see him. MG, the strong, bass-playing proprietress of a frog knickknack business sees Du as her dead idol, Jerry Garcia. Laurie, whose young children live in the house, sees him as the Savior and his coming as a sign of the Rapture. Laurie's young son sees Du as a pet and takes him to school for show and tell.

Using the powers of the tunjos to disguise himself as Victor, a Chicano student, Du attends Calaveras High where he sets world records on the swim team. The Assassins of Fire discover him and chase him back up the mountain.

To earn money to find his mother, Du takes a job playing with MG's band Pocketful at the Freakers Ball. Du inadvertently eats psilocybin mushrooms. The drug heightens his awareness of the supernatural powers embodied in the tunjos. After leading the band and audience through a night of wild music, Du flees the spirits chasing him.

After he awakes from his hallucinogenic nightmare, Du realizes he has no choice but to follow the path laid out for him by the Plumed Serpent. MG offers to drive him to Oregon to search for his mother.

Chapter XI-XVIII Supernatural Aid

Du and MG reach the Balfore Institute, where disguised as Victor, he talks his way in and finds his mother, Lilia, in a catatonic state.

He learns his mother's brother, Eduardo, is expected any moment. Du can think of no way to take his mother from the institute and leaves her with the tunjos. On the way out he realizes an Assassin of Fire has been drawn by the tunjos and has come to kill Lilia. Du rushes back and reaches his mother's room just as the Assassin disguised as a nurse, is ready to murder her.

Possessed by the tunjos, Lilia kills the Assassin, but is left near death, sustained only by the power of the necklace. Du takes her and begins his journey to Manoa.

Through an empathetic connection with his mother, Du learns the truth of his origins. Twenty years before, at her wedding to Theodore Moss at Omagua, her family's ancestral estate in Colombia, a strange Indian, Norane, the brother of Kare, gives her the box containing the tunjos that Du will later find at the bottom of the Lake of the Frogs. From that moment, Lilia is possessed by the power of the Xucha witches. Her soul separates from her body and Norane escorts her to Manoa where she is subjected to a tortuous test to see if she is the earthly mother of Tatya-Masi.

At the same time, the Plumed Serpent possesses the body of Theodore Moss who rapes Lilia in the limousine as it drives away from the wedding. The Serpent attempts to control Du from the moment of his conception so that Du will free him from the spell the Xucha witches have placed on him.

Sympathizing with the agony his mother went through to give him life, Du vows to keep her alive and return her body to Manoa to be rejoined with her soul.

Titus and Bessie, Assassins of Fire, are waiting for them when they return to Calaveras. The road up to the mountain is closed by landslides and flooding. Titus escorts them up to the cabin where they find Kare waiting. The Plumed Serpent protects Du, but tells him he must return the tunjos to the box. The Serpent says the tunjos is causing rain to fall all over the world. Floods are destroying cities, killing thousands.

Knowing that without the necklace his mother will die, Du refuses.

The Assassins of Fire attack. Du, MG and Lilia are saved by Lilia's brother, Eduardo, a paramilitary leader from Colombia who has come to the U.S. to sell drugs to buy arms. They race down the mountain dodging missiles, bullets, landslides to his waiting plane and manage to take off only after Du uses his new found power to lift the twin-engine plane over a hanger.

Chapters XIX-XXII- Crossing the Threshold

The obstacles in Du's path, both external and internal, grow stronger. Tortured in body by being out of the water for so long, confined in the airplane with his uncle, MG, and his mother, the urge to wear the tunjos and become Tatya-Masi increases as comes closer to Colombia.

Finally, unable to resist, Du takes the tunjos from his mother. Immediately, Kinchel the Avenger Lord of Fire strikes. Too late, Du realizes that his mother armed with the tunjos has been the one keeping the Fire Lord at bay. Unable to control the energy of the necklace, Du is helpless as the plane goes into a spin until he manages to returns the necklace to Lilia. The plane recovers at the last second and lands at a paramilitary base.

Du is separated from MG when she accepts Eduardo's bribe. Eduardo commandeers a small helicopter and flies Du and Lilia to Omagua, their family plantation at the edge of the jungle by the volcano where Manoa the lost city of King Eldorado is hidden.

Dehydrated, his skin peeling, Lilia and Du's arrival at Omagua causes an uproar among the family.

Chapters XXIII-XXIV Initiation/ Threshold Guardians

Du's grandfather welcomes him. He is a scholar and tells Du about the myth of Tatya-Masi. Grandfather theorizes that the tunjos is a tool the ancients created to end the world of the Spanish and return the land to the Indians. He says that in the ancient Mayan prophesies, this world will end in the year 2012. This information gives Du hope that he might still have time to escape his fate.

Theodore Moss arrives with Colombian colonel, Hernando Rosas, who is possessed by Mitnal Smoking Mirror, a spirit even more powerful than Kinchel the Avenger Lord of Fire. Du spies on his father and overhears a plot of the Colombian military to join with the paramilitary to crush the leftists and form a new country. Du's grandfather refuses to participate and is about to throw Rosas out when Du is chased from his hiding place by his half-brother and falls at his shocked father's feet.

Chapters XXV-XXVI - Ritual Death

The Plumed Serpent helps Du and his grandfather escape. They flee down the rain-gorged fifth fall to the cave where as boys Norane found the box and Kare the conquistador's cross. Du finds the Staff of Life. Kare takes it from him and uses it to bring the dead conquistadors back to life. Though restored, the Plumed Serpent can not be freed from his spell by anyone but Du.

Before Du can release him, Theodore Moss, the Assassins of Fire, Norane, and the Xucha witches arrive. A battle ensues in the cave between the reconstituted conquistadors, and the surrogates of Kinchel and Mitnal, Norane and the witches..

Norane rips the cross from Kare's neck and flings it over an underground cliff. The Plumed Serpent cannot intervene in the material world without the cross. Helplessly, Kare obeys the Plumed Serpent's command to retrieve the cross and jumps over the cliff.

Using the Staff of Life Du, Lilia, and Norane are escorted by the Xucha to Manoa.

Chapters XXVII- Epilogue Refusal of Return/Master of Two Worlds

Du completes his magical journey to Manoa and reaches the fountain of youth.

His arrival revitalizes the dead city and releases the witches from their crypts. He accepts that he is Tatya-Masi, and uses his power as a deity to return to life, and hide himself from Kinchel.

Along with his Mother, he emerges from the Cave of the Xucha, wills the rains to stops, and sets about to take advantage of the time he has to live as a young man before he is called on to be the warrior god against the evil that is represented by his father and Mitnal.

The year is 2012. The myth of Tatya-Masi has grown. New Granada has seceded from Colombia. Rosas is the absolute ruler of the narcotics and oil rich nation. The completed second book in the Lake of the Frogs trilogy opens from the point of view of a poverty-stricken 12-year-old Indian girl living with her mother, brothers and sisters in a slum on the outskirts of Quesada, the capital of New Granada. Anta is too busy trying to help her family survive another day to spend much time wondering about the popular myth that the god Tatya-Masi is coming to save them.

Anta and her fourteen-year-old brother Koya break into Rosas' palace, steal the tunjos which Rosas took from Lilia at the end of the first book.. Koya is captured, but Anta escapes with the tunjos. Ruthlessly, Rosas burns the barrio and kills Anta's mother, little brothers and sisters, trying to find the tunjos. Anta pursued by Rosas and his men, makes her way back to the jungle, and Norane, the Indian who gave the tunjos to Lilia mother.

Du has been living with his mother, earning a living as the keyboard player in MG's band. The vial of the Waters of Life that has been keeping Lilia alive is nearly expended. Lilia can no longer hide them from the Assassins of Fire and must return to Manoa or die. Du comes home from a concert tour and finds Lilia near death. Norane sends Eduardo to them with the tunjos. Once again the necklace keeps Lilia alive, but with the Assassins on their trail, Du, Lilia, and MG are flown by Eduardo to Florida only to find Major Bruto, Theodore Moss' henchman, waiting for them at the secluded airstrip. After a battle involving air-boats, helicopters, and missiles, the small trawler carrying Du and his entourage escapes the cypress swamp.

They arrive on the coast of Colombia when a category V hurricane hits. As the legend prophesied, Wind blows the Fire away. Du and Lilia are washed, naked, onto the shore at the foot of a giant ancient statue of the god Tatya-Masi where people from all over New Granada have been waiting at the statue for the god to appear.

Lilia and Norane for the first time since her wedding to Theodore Moss are given the chance to renew their love. MG and Eduardo survive the storm and are washed up a day's journey down the shore. Their attraction to each other is irresistible despite, MG's love for Du.

Anta has been living with Norane's aunt at Omagua where she believes her brother Koya has been taken. Anta steals a whoremonger's money, is caught and taken to Rosas' torture chamber, where she finds Koya. Though terribly mutilated by Rosas, Koya and Anta escape when Du and the native army attacks Omagua from the jungle.

Rosas escapes and, disguised as a peasant, drives back to Quesada in a pig truck. Believing that the elite is responsible for the uprising, Rosas blows up the Church of the Founding Fathers, revealing a giant buried statue of Tatya-Masi.

Anta and Koya chase Rosas into his underground lair where he is eaten by a truckload of starving pigs. During the final battle for New Granada, Anta and Koya lead a peasant army from Quesada. Du's final epiphany in Manoa unleashes a massive earthquake and eruption of the volcano Susuprina that strikes down Quetzal and the New Granada air force, vanquishes the New Granada army, and raises the buried statue of Tatya-Masi. The books ends with the nation of New Granada under control of the Indians for the first time in six hundred years and Du, a spirit in the Lake of the Frogs.

The drafted third book in the series shows the origins of the myth, the conquest of Manoa, the trapping of Quetzal in the body of a conquistador, the discovery of the tunjos and the Serpent's cross by Norane and Kare, the early childhood of Eduardo and Lilia, the conception, birth, and bringing of Du to the Lake of the Frogs as an infant.