"A South Carolina chimpanzee sanctuary affiliated with a university provides the unusual setting for Wesselmann's powerful second novel (after 1997's Trutor & the Balloonist). Dana Armstrong, a primatologist, acquired her understanding of chimpanzees at great personal cost, having been raised along with her younger brother, Zack, with a female chimp as a sibling (they communicated using sign language) until a tragic event ended the experiment. Now she must deal with an even more traumatic event. One day Dana arrives at the sanctuary, where she's the director, to discover that someone has damaged buildings and released chimpanzees unadapted to the wild. As Dana battles to save the sanctuary, personal and professional jealousies, campus politics, the fate of the chimpanzees and the stirring stories of Dana and her family play out in unforgettable fashion. With empathetic insight, the author precisely observes both human and animal behavior. Those with an insatiable appetite for conspiracy thrillers involving the discovery of an ancient text with world-shaking implications may enjoy Cutler's debut, but predictable plotting and routine prose will likely disappoint others. On sabbatical leave in Israel, American archeologist Josh Cohan makes the chance find of a lifetime in a desert cave — a jar containing a scroll that may be an autobiographical narrative by Jesus Christ himself emphasizing his human struggles. After Josh shares the news of his sensational discovery with the Israeli authorities, the scroll becomes the target of a shadowy cabal, the Guardians, which launches assaults on Cohan and those close to him. The novel's romantic interest, an Israeli antiquarian's knockout daughter, is abducted twice and threatened with harm straight out of a silent-movie serial. The author's attempts to preach a message of religious tolerance get lost in plot devices that titillate rather than engage the reader's emotions. Author tour. (Feb.)" Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

When someone releases the chimpanzees at the South Carolina Primate Project, its director, Dana Armstrong, is forced to confront the complexity of both her past and the present as she struggles to preserve the chimps' sanctuary.