"Harper Yates, a former Vietnam War draft resister and unrepentant child of the sixties, finds himself dangerously adrift in the Reagan eighties. He lost his teaching job, his career as a novelist is foundering, and his wife, Caroline, is too busy pursuing a late-blooming career as an academic to notice that he is coming undone. Their once-solid marriage seems headed for collapse. But Harper desperate to hold on to his wife, even if he has to leave her to do so." "With Caroline's reluctant blessing, Harper goes off to the rain forest of Chiapas, Mexico, to the ancient Mayan site of Baktun, home now to howler, monkeys, poisonous snakes, buried temples, and an American archaeological team. The Baktun Archaeological Project is entering its fifth season in the field, and though the site has been cleared, mapped, and made to reveal many of its secret, its essential mystery remains. Why was this great Mayan city abandoned? The archaeological evidence points to a people who maintained their cultural integrity to the very end, avoiding the foreign intrusions and internal decay so evident at other Mayan sites. Did Baktun truly defy the general collapse of Mayan civilization, and if so, how? And then why finally did it, too, fail?" "As Harp joins the effort to decipher the clues to this ancient mystery, he is drawn into the intense and often uproarious life of the archaeologists' camp and its friendships, feuds, and romantic entanglements. Here he must struggle with his habitual alienation and with the temptation offered by a seductive lab director, Katie Smith." "But the spirits of the ancestors and the animated archaeologists are not the only ones in this exotic jungle. Hidden in the shadows are the Mayans of today, an indigenous population pursued by Guatemalan soldiers with automatic weapons. Thus, even as startling discoveries give rise to a new understanding of Baktun's past, the ancient city's present is disturbed by people made refugees in the land of their forebears." "Written both with irreverent humor and a serious regard for Mayan history, this highly original novel deftly blends an archaeological mystery with a powerful story of personal redemption and marital survival. It is a story about how we recover the past and how we recover from it. Rising from the Ruins touches both the intellect and the heart, absorbing the reader in a unique and unforgettable adventure."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved