Jacket Design by Michael N. Candland

Cover illustration and interior art by Sharon McCall

Pleiades Rising
a novel by Christine Candland

When seventeen-year-old Maggie Marland and nineteen-year-old Will Brighton explore a Chumash Indian cave in Malibu, California, they find a mysterious gold coin and the centuries-old bones of Yacate, an Aztec shaman.

Later, Yacate appears to Maggie in a dream. She is convinced he wants her to return his bones to Mexico. While her parents are away on a cruise, Maggie, Will, and Sammy, her fourteen-year-old brother, travel south of the border in search of what is to be Yacate’s final resting place. Uncertain of where the bones are to be buried, the three pursue clues that ultimately lead them to Teotihuacan, the “home of the gods.”

They arrive on the eve of the Summer Solstice when the Pleiades star cluster is set to appear before dawn. Maggie and Will investigate a mysterious cave located under the two-thousand-year-old Pyramid of the Sun. There, they discover the ruins of an ancient civilization and the mysterious object that awaits Yacate’s return. Maggie’s determination to find the secret of the Aztec’s bones, brings this spellbinding adventure to its exciting conclusion.

" I used to sit out on the deck of our house in the early morning and watch the sky where it meets the sea. I’d wonder what would happen if their edges didn’t meet. I was certain there’d be a narrow space to crawl through. And then what? Would I fall off the planet? Where to? I feel that way now, on this cool summer night, as I look through the Rover’s dusty windows. Thrown into the backseat of a stranger’s car. It’s happened. I’ve crawled through that narrow space between the sky and the sea and fallen out. And the worst part is, no one noticed.

My breathing alternates between short breaths of indignation and long ones that swell my diaphragm with spasms of terror. As we drive along, the almost-full moon casts its light over the side of the road, past craggy boulders where steep canyon walls drop into an endless pit. Harold turns off on the fire trail where the road becomes uneven and bumpy. This area is familiar, even in the windy darkness. He’s not far from the cave now."