The Thirteenth Apostle

A rich, dramatic novel of a kind rarely seen today. It is superbly written adventure fiction, but much more, adventure extended beyond reality into the mind and soul of a man.Donald Webb is an American consul stationed in the main port city of a Central American country. He has resigned himself, not unhappily, to a life of compromise and safety, until the day he receives a report from deep in the mountain jungle, a peculiarly incomplete report of the death of an obscure American painter whom he remembers from a brief and strange encounter. The report and the memory draw Webb into the jungle to find out the truth, leading him eventually to the base of a steep and forbidding mountain. He is told by the camp there that he must climb to the top. It is during the climb that Webb finds his life on a new dangerous point of balance...an experience that leads him deep into himself farn beyond the safeguards of civilzation. Accompanying Webb is a jungle priest, Padre Paolo...a man of profound and, to Webb at times, irritating faith. Also to Webb's quest are certain inhabitants of the mining camp....the remarkably intelligent opponent of faith, Con Hernandez; Barrie, the vicious mining engineer; and Barrie's daughter, Mona. Brooding over all of Webb's experience stands the artist, Crispian, who once named Webb the Thirteenth Apostle: "He who is called but not chosen."