Introduction

Los Angeles, 1962.

Dr. Wiley McCoy has a successful medical practice, movie-star good looks, and a substance abuse problem. When a young woman dies on his operating table, his life and career are destroyed.

Romulo DaVinci is a conniving Voodoo shaman with supernatural powers to resurrect the dead.

The disgraced doctor and the medical adventurer are thrown together on a gonzo journey through the seminal events of the 1960’s including the JFK assassination, the Apollo moon landing, and the Manson killings. Along the way, they commandeer a U.S. nuclear submarine and encounter real-life characters from bonkers plutocrat Howard Hughes to ruthless Haitian leader Papa Doc Duvalier.

The Thresher Ghost is a carnival ride through a tumultuous decade--its music, its conspiracies and its scandals--as McCoy and DaVinci cross oceans and medical boundaries in a duel between science and magic.

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Excerpt

A flashing light beyond the surge and moments later a small launch glided out of the darkness. McCoy scrambled up off the wet sand onto the military-grade Zodiac, lurching past a light machine gun mounted at its bow. ... view entire excerpt...

Discussion Questions

1. What are your memories of the events of the summer of 1969: Chappaquiddick, the moon landing, the Manson killings, and Woodstock? How did these events change how Americans viewed themselves?
2. How would the reporting on, and our understanding of, the seminal events of the 1960s be different if they had occurred in the age of social media?
3. Who is your favorite character? Who is your least favorite? Why?
4. The music of the era permeates the storyline. How do the lyrics amplify the scenes they are associated with?
5. It is said that magic is science that has yet to be discovered. Discuss the tension between magic and medicine in the book. Does either prevail?
6. Kennedy’s fate at the end of the book is ambiguous. What do you think he did next?

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