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The Finding: A Novel
The Finding is a gripping novel about one man’s entanglement with prophecy, fate, and atonement.
It’s the summer of 1987 and Henry Barnes, a veteran Hollywood film producer, director, and movie star, has embarked on a new project: a thriller with mystical overtones about buried treasure.
Barnes is estranged from his beautiful wife Martha, an actress and dancer famous for her fiery personality. Living alone and contemplating his own future and the premise of his film, he’s drawn to prophecy for dramatic purposes but unnerved by it, too. Led by fate to move the setting of his film incrementally closer to home, he becomes enmeshed in the Hopi prediction of a lost treasure’s return and its signal of global calamity.
As his film works its way through preproduction and nears its shooting date, Barnes finds himself increasingly unable to distinguish art from life, creativity from reality, and the world-ending prophecy at the heart of his film from his own headlong destiny.
It’s the summer of 1987 and Henry Barnes, a veteran Hollywood film producer, director, and movie star, has embarked on a new project: a thriller with mystical overtones about buried treasure.
Barnes is estranged from his beautiful wife Martha, an actress and dancer famous for her fiery personality. Living alone and contemplating his own future and the premise of his film, he’s drawn to prophecy for dramatic purposes but unnerved by it, too. Led by fate to move the setting of his film incrementally closer to home, he becomes enmeshed in the Hopi prediction of a lost treasure’s return and its signal of global calamity.
As his film works its way through preproduction and nears its shooting date, Barnes finds himself increasingly unable to distinguish art from life, creativity from reality, and the world-ending prophecy at the heart of his film from his own headlong destiny.
331 pages, Kindle Edition
Published August 11, 2026
About the author
Dustin Beall Smith
4 books9 followersDustin Beall Smith is the author of Free Fall: Writings on Voice, Desire & Surrender (Not Two Press, 2025) and Key Grip: A Memoir of Endless Consequences (Houghton Mifflin, 2008), winner of the Bakeless Prize for Nonfiction.
His essays have appeared in many publications, including The New York Times Magazine, The Sun, and The Gettysburg Review, and Gray Love: Stories About Dating and Relationships After 60 (Rutgers University Press, 2023).
A former creative writing professor at Gettysburg College and key grip in the film industry, Smith brings a lifetime of storytelling, adventure, and insight to the page.
His essays have appeared in many publications, including The New York Times Magazine, The Sun, and The Gettysburg Review, and Gray Love: Stories About Dating and Relationships After 60 (Rutgers University Press, 2023).
A former creative writing professor at Gettysburg College and key grip in the film industry, Smith brings a lifetime of storytelling, adventure, and insight to the page.
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