Plot
According to Kesey's "Introduction," the novel was inspired by an actual news clipping, an Associated Press story on October 31, 1964 entitled "Charles Oswald Loach, Doctor of Theosophy and discoverer of so-called 'SECRET CAVE OF AMERICAN ANCIENTS,' which stirred archaeological controversy in 1928."
The rest of the novel appropriates Loach as its central character. Set in the 1930s, Loach is imagined as a convicted murderer (he killed a photographer to protect the secret of the cave) who is released from San Quentin Prison, in the custody of a priest, to lead an expedition to rediscover the cave.
The novel—described by The New York Times as Indiana Jones meets The Canterbury Tales—features a motley crew of characters: Father Paul, an unbalanced priest; an archaeologist, Dr. Jocelyn Crane; Loach's brother, a museum curator; publisher Rodney Makai and the "Blavatskian Makai sisters"; their African-American driver, Ned; and Juke and Boyle, World War I veterans still suffering the ill effects of mustard gas.
The characters spend most of the novel together in a military vehicle making their way to Utah where Loach says the cave is located, and getting caught in various comic misadventures along the way.
Read more about this topic: Caverns (novel)
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