Mike Bryant is a world-class cave diver and diving instructor. After discovering a previously unknown (to non-natives) cenote, or water-filled sink hole, in the jungles of Mexico, Mike and his mentor Pete Wiley attempt a record-setting dive. Equipment failures at 1,100 feet prevent Mike from reaching the bottom of the cenote. But, for unknown reasons, Pete never makes it back to the top. Mike returns to Florida and his work as a dive instructor, but the cenote and his friend Pete are never far from his mind. Five years after the fateful dive, Mike receives a letter informing him that his exclusive diving rights to the site will soon expire, and that Viktor Bellum — a competing diver and all-around shady character — is preparing to make an attempt. Against the wishes of Bridget, his girlfriend and dive partner, Mike begins planning and outfitting another expedition to Mexico. As his team makes preparations at the Well of Sorrows (K’uxulch’en, the Mayan name for this cenote), it becomes readily apparent that someone — or something — will do almost anything to keep Mike from reaching his goal.
The synopsis I just gave is in the spirit of the one that appears on the book’s back cover. These two summaries each describe a fairly run-of-the-mill adventure book. The suggested categorization provided on the cover bears this out: “Fiction/General/Suspense.” However, this is only partly truthful. In actuality, Yucutan Deep is an Evangelical Christian adventure novel. There is very little on the book to tip a prospective buyer off to this fact. One hint is to be found in Morrisey’s bio: “A popular speaker, he is also active in both youth and prison ministry.” The only other indication comes in the last sentence of the blurb: “Yucutan Deep is a taut tale of loyalty, greed, and the wellsprings of faith and life.” These two clues are present, but there is nothing that explicitly reveals the book’s true nature.
“So,” you may be wondering, “what makes an Evangelical Christian adventure novel different from a regular one?” The short answer: lots of Jesus. A more comprehensive answer is that the climax of the plot comprises not only the height of the action, but also the height of Mike Bryant’s existential crisis and the point of his becoming (underwater, of course) a Born-again Christian. This conversion comes about after Mike makes an underwater escape that he attributes to God, but that James Bond or Dirk Pitt would have ascribed to skill, luck, and the ability to improvise under pressure. The character who is largely responsible for Mike’s conversion is a missionary who works with isolated native peoples in Mexico (ugh… another rant for another time). This missionary — named Elvis — is an ex-surfer who, were this book ever adapted for the big screen, would best be played by a youngish Keanu Reeves, circa Point Break. Elvis actually says things like: “Dude, miracles are my boss’s specialty!” Now, if Elvis’s surferisms were the most offensive aspect of Yucutan Deep, I could just write the book off as intended for a different audience. Unfortunately, this is not the case.
The book’s portrayal of the indigenous people to whom the cenote is sacred is often closed-minded and ignorant. Morrisey creates a fictional tribe of Mayan descent who have had very little contact with the outside world. He then makes this tribe evil, or at least misguided (in any case, ripe for “saving”), by having them throw their sick and dying into the cenote, in a twist on Mayan sacrifice. Of the Mayan belief that sacred cenotes are a sort of portal to rebirth in the afterlife, Elvis says that it’s the same principle as a Christian heaven, “it’s just a terrible distortion of it.” Later in the book it is revealed that this new form of sacrifice (the sick and injured, rather than the healthy and willing) was instigated by the meddling of a deceitful white man, anyway.
In another part of the book, the tribe’s leader agrees to a simple test of the validity of his religion and the existence of his gods. Should the test fail, he is fully prepared to convert to Christianity and persuade his people to do the same. I suppose this is the sort of thing career missionaries fantasize about: whole groups of people who are willing to give up centuries of ritual and tradition in the face of simple challenges of their beliefs. I hardly think that any Catholic would denounce his or her faith if his or her post-Communion stomach contents were shown not to include any human blood or flesh.
Tom Morrisey also badly confuses the concepts of faith and confidence in empirical scientific data. The diving equipment that Mike plans to use for his second attempt at diving the cenote has undergone rigorous testing to ensure that it will properly function under the conditions to which Mike will subject it. The equipment has, of course, never been tested in the cenote at the target depth — that wouldn’t be a test, that would be the real dive. But, Elvis interprets Mike’s willingness to use the gear as powerful faith; thus, he tells Mike that he possesses the strength of faith necessary to become a Born-again Christian. Mike simply accepts this, apparently not realizing the massive difference between the two.
Please, don’t read this book, or for that matter anything else that Tom Morrisey may have written. If you want an underwater and/or archaeological adventure novel, go with something by Clive Cussler or Douglas Preston. And please remember — especially when shopping in thrift stores or used book shops, as I was when I purchased this — you can’t judge a book by its cover.
Read my initial reaction to learning the true nature of Yucutan Deep here.
