Bentari is a sweeping tale set in the panoramic back drop of ancient equatorial forests. The action rushes on the winds of war from an isolated village across plains and woodlands to a valley that surrounds a volcano. Within its caldera, the chambers and vents are hollow, dark and deathly silent. Yet still they breathe, and gas from the pit is deadly—the perfect place for a treasure of untold wealth to lie hidden.

Lava formations, calderas, caves and tunnels are more than scenery; they play roles in Bentari. The violent earthen evolutions of the ages shaped the setting. Man’s aggression wrote the story’s rending action—it flowed across the land—it sank under ancient forests and spilled into labyrinthine tunnels below a massive caldera. Nature’s vast equilibrium casts the net and causes many in its toils to wonder, “Is there balance?”

The Valley of Shadows, so named for the shadows of the dead, surrounds the wide caldera. An ancient rival tribe of Bentari’s people, generations earlier, was laid waste by a gas eruption. Poison air stole upon them and delivered extinction on the wind. Bentari’s tribe was so shocked by the mysterious obliteration that they left the skeletons where they lay. The land became forbidden.

Bentari scales up lava walls at the wellspring of the Kwa River. His ascent is peaceful in the drought’s final days. Crocodiles lie hidden in states of torpor in dried mud dens and pay no attention to the swift climber. When he returns, the storm has broken. Lightening throws a fleeting view below. The leviathans are awake. The boy’s enemies are upon him from arear. The rock ladder that he recently ascended held secrets unknown by his pursuers. Now this knowledge is the boy’s only hope as the chase concludes in the gale’s full fury.


Photos: In the caldera at Mt. Tabor Park—Portland, Oregon

When I grew up in Portland, we boasted that the caldera in Mt. Tabor Park was the only volcano inside a large city in the US. Now, geologists have taught us that dozens of volcanoes like Mt. Tabor are all part of the Boring Lava Fields in and around Portland.

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