A Hiker's Guide to Purgatory: A Novel

One morning, attorney Dan Geary, seventy-seven years old, finds himself in the middle of a rolling, polychrome landscape. The greens are bold and bright. Birds sing in the distance. Tall grasses surge like a sea before the wind. He has never seen anything quite like it. But somehow—with the doctors and beeping monitors suddenly gone—he knows exactly where he is: the afterlife.

What a relief not to be floating on a cloud, playing a harp. Instead, a hiking pack full of gear sits on his back, a...