Decoding the Phoenix

I know the answer to the world's deepest secret," Graham Newsdon, a functioning alcoholic and Harvard medical student and the protagonist of Decoding the Phoenix, declares in the novel's opening page. After stumbling across a puzzling communication from his deceased Navy Seal brother, Graham must work to unravel a litany of secrets sobering in their implications not only for himself, but for the past twelve-thousand years of human history, the secrets of the universe, and even the nature of God.

Had he not, in his hungover state, opened the e-mail, Graham could have continued on his predetermined successful, if dysfunctional, path and never embarked on the paradigm-shifting journey that so loosens his grasp on reality and obliterates not only what he chooses to believe but what he trusts as fact. With the help of his long-term girlfriend, his quirky Mensan best friend, and his wild and athletic best girlfriend since childhood, he sets out to decode this complex cryptogram, which he soon discovers is charged with the potential to unhinge the very control that certain government officials are intent, at all costs, on maintaining.

In the vein of Dan Brown, MD Tchaves takes the reader on an electrifying hunt for what is real and what is possible, encountering along the way politics, conspiracy, fringe medicine, history, and language, and what it means to survive—thrive, even—when you have the weight of the world on your shoulders. Decoding the Phoenix is a 50,000-word thriller that proves that love and humor may not be the answer, but that without these variables there is no worthy solution to any challenging problem or improbable situation.