The Geology of Secrets

The Geology of Secrets is a family drama set in the American Southwest which follows a lonely man’s journey from abandonment to a heart-opening awakening in a land haunted by its own complexities and mystery. Don Corely, a stoic, solitary man, devotes himself to his family’s meadowland near northern New Mexico’s wild mountain foothills seeking solace from the troubling questions surrounding his mother’s mysterious death when he was a kid. So caught in the past, he is blind to the land’s well-being as a warming climate threatens until a stranger who claims ancestral ties to the land, appears unleashing family secrets and forcing him to confront a drying, fading meadow. As they toil there one summer, he tangles with matters of the heart and the trials of how to keep the meadowland’s past alive while ensuring its future. 

“Here is a debut novel that reads like a fine landscape painting transformed into words. In The Geology of Secrets, Debra Hughes carefully considers the mysteries, burdens, and joys that come with owning―and loving―a particular swath of land. The timbres and textures of northern New Mexico are woven into every page.”-–Hampton Sides, NYT bestselling author of Blood and Thunder and The Wide Wide Sea

“The Geology of Secrets explores the long history and diverse uses of land and water in northern New Mexico. Setting a measurable span of human generations and cultural histories against immeasurable eons of geologic time, Hughes raises profound questions around land preservation, the limits of science, and the traditional but endangered wisdom of indigenous stories. Who, if anyone, owns land, and how, as climate change threatens planetary life, are humans to take collective responsibility and work toward a sustainable future? Meticulously researched, superbly written, Hughes’s novel is a fearless meditation on the impermanence and resilience of living things. A unique addition to climate fiction and the literature of the Southwest, The Geology of Secrets easily transcends these categories, promising to captivate a far broader audience of readers.” –Melissa Pritchard, author of Flight of the Wild Swan and A Solemn Pleasure