''Thunderhead'' is a thriller novel by American writers Douglas Preston and

Lincoln Child Lincoln Child (13 October 1957) is an American author of techno-thriller and horror novels. Though he is most well known for his collaborations with Douglas Preston (including the Agent Pendergast series and the Gideon Crew series, among other ...

. The book was published on July 1, 1999 by

Grand Central Publishing Grand Central Publishing is a book publishing imprint of Hachette Book Group, originally established in 1970 as Warner Books when Warner Communications acquired the Paperback Library. When Time Warner sold their book publishing business to Hache ...

Plot synopsis

Anthropologist Nora Kelly finds a letter that was written sixteen years ago, but mysteriously sent to her only recently. The letter is written by her father, long believed dead. The letter states that he had found the lost city of gold,

Quivira Quivira is a place named by Spanish conquistador Francisco Vásquez de Coronado in 1541, for the mythical Seven Cities of Gold that he never found. Quivira was a province of the ancestral Wichita people, located near the Great Bend of the Arkans ...

. Kelly organizes an expedition into a harsh, remote corner of

Utah Utah ( , ) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. Utah is a landlocked U.S. state bordered to its east by Colorado, to its northeast by Wyoming, to its north by Idaho, to its south by Arizona, and to it ...

's canyon country. A portion of the team learns that the city of Quivira held not gold, but micaceous, golden colored pottery, and that it also was a center for an Aztec death cult, which had enslaved the native

Anasazi The Ancestral Puebloans, also known as the Anasazi, were an ancient Native American culture that spanned the present-day Four Corners region of the United States, comprising southeastern Utah, northeastern Arizona, northwestern New Mexico, a ...

people. The Aztec rulers used black magic, aided by a powder of the fungus ''

Coccidioides immitis ''Coccidioides immitis'' is a pathogenic fungus that resides in the soil in certain parts of the southwestern United States, northern Mexico, and a few other areas in the Western Hemisphere. Epidemiology ''C. immitis'', along with its relati ...

'' which could kill by causing

coccidioidomycosis Coccidioidomycosis (, ), commonly known as cocci, Valley fever, as well as California fever, desert rheumatism, or San Joaquin Valley fever, is a mammalian fungal disease caused by '' Coccidioides immitis'' or ''Coccidioides posadasii''. Coccid ...

. Kelly's teammate, Sloane, attempts to kill Kelly to be the sole person who can claim the find, not suspecting what Kelly has learned about the fungal infection, and neither parties realizing until very late that they are being tracked by contemporary practitioners of the cult, who have enhanced their ability to stalk and fight with traditional hallucinogens such as

psilocybin Psilocybin ( , ) is a naturally occurring psychedelic prodrug compound produced by more than 200 species of fungi. The most potent are members of the genus ''Psilocybe'', such as '' P. azurescens'', '' P. semilanceata'', and '' P.&nbs ...

, mescaline, and datura.

Background

The character of Nora Kelly is modeled on the amateur archaeologist and writer

Nora Benjamin Kubie Nora Benjamin Kubie (January 4, 1899 - September 8, 1988) was an American writer, artist and amateur archaeologist. Biography Born Eleanor Gottheil, she was the daughter of Muriel H. and Paul Gotteil, an executive with the Cunard Line in New York. ...

, grandmother of Lincoln Child.

Continuity

Bill Smithback, the journalist hired to chronicle the expedition, previously appeared in Preston and Child's

Aloysius Pendergast Aloysius Xingu Leng Pendergast is a fictional character appearing in novels by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. He first appeared as a supporting character in their first novel, '' Relic'' (1995), and in its 1997 sequel '' Reliquary'', bef ...

series, and is revealed to have achieved some level of fame based on his novelization of the events depicted in '' Relic'' and '' Reliquary''. Nora Kelly later appears as a supporting character in the Pendergast series, starting with ''

The Cabinet of Curiosities ''The Cabinet of Curiosities'' is a thriller novel by American writers Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, released on June 3, 2002 by Grand Central Publishing. This is the third installment in the Special Agent Pendergast series. Plot summary W ...

'' in 2002, and her final appearance being in '' Cemetery Dance'' in 2009. Then gets her own novel series starting with ''Old Bones'' in 2019.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Thunderhead (Novel) 1998 American novels Novels by Douglas Preston Novels by Lincoln Child Collaborative novels Novels set in Utah