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Traveling across the landscapes of California, two brothers—a recent parolee and a Berkeley professor—go in search of their teenage sister who has vanished, looking for the reasons why she left home.
High in the hills of Berkeley, California, a father summons his two sons, Leonardo, a biology professor, and Gabriel, a recent parolee, and tasks them with locating their seventeen-year-old sister, Lenore, who has vanished, leaving a two-word note that simply reads: I’m okay. The meeting is scored by furious rehearsing from the downstairs conservatory. Peoria, the family matriarch, a world-class pianist with a tenuous grip on reality, is preparing for an important concert engagement.
The brothers’ quests carry them in opposite directions—one northward to the Oregon border, the other southward to the Mexican border—as they search the length of California not just for their sister but for the reasons why she left home, reasons that will lead them into the heart of their mysterious family vocation of powerful healers.
In lyrical and precise prose, Buchholz richly conjures the landscapes of the West, weaving touches of magical realism and deft humor in a poignant and atmospheric exploration of family, magic, and the meaning of connection.
“Mesmerizing and magical, perfect from the first page to the last.”
— Pedro Hoffmeister, author of American Afterlife
"Masterful and wondrous. Each character, all of them thrumming with so much life they deserve their own novel, moves through this relentless, unique story into a finale that opens into the universe. The reader walks through virtually every bit of California’s differing landscapes alongside them, feeling every single moment. Cartographer of Sands is both a California novel and an American novel, and rich and true in both of those veins"
—Lewis Buzbee, author of The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop
"In The Cartographer of Sands, Jason Buchholz charts the tremors of a family navigating secrets, mistakes, and the unknowable depths of their ancestry. Told with a lyrical hand and an eye for sensory detail, the story unfolds with no signposts—just the raw, immediate experience of characters living through what they cannot yet understand.
This is a novel where the mystical brushes up against the mundane—where visions bloom behind truck stops, and the sacred slips into the everyday. Rich in specificity and a profound sense of place, Cartographer explores the ripple effects of seemingly unrelated choices, the shifting lines of identity and purpose, and the maps we draw to find our way back to ourselves and each other."
—Nikki Van De Car, author of The Invisible Wild
Jason Buchholz is the author of the novel A Paper Son (Tyrus Books, 2016), which Publisher’s Weekly described as “a gripping debut” and Booklist described as “wonderfully imaginative.” He is the co-founder of Collaborist, an editorial boutique that provides writing, editing, and educational services for aspiring and established authors. He was an editor and the art director of Achiote Press, and his poetry and short fiction have appeared in Gobbledegook and Switchback. He graduated from UC Berkeley and holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of San Francisco. Jason lives in the East Bay area, in Richmond, California.