Dangerous Passage follows Cam Breakstone, a twenty-three-year-old history graduate trying to find his footing in St. Augustine, Florida. Money is tight, his plans for the future have stalled, and the loss of his family still shapes much of the way he lives. Yet Cam has something most people do not: when he touches an old object, he can sense traces of the time it has passed through.
That ability has fascinated him since childhood, but it comes with another, far less welcome sensitivity. Certain historic places make Cam feel that something is wrong with the space around him. To everyone else, these locations appear perfectly ordinary. To Cam, they feel dangerously thin, almost as though the familiar world is stretched over something he could fall through. It is a feeling he has spent years trying to avoid.
When television producer Pete Sloane learns about Cam’s unusual abilities, he sees an opportunity for a ghost-hunting program. Cam sees danger. He has no desire to return to the supposedly haunted places that have frightened him since childhood, but losing his job and struggling to pay his bills makes the offer difficult to dismiss. What begins as a reluctant screen test at the St. Augustine Lighthouse soon becomes something far stranger than anything Pete intended to capture on camera. At the Lighthouse, Cam encounters the very thing he has always feared: a place where the boundary of ordinary space seems to break down. His experience forces him beyond what he understands about history, time, and reality itself.
When Cam finally makes his way back, St. Augustine is still there. The streets are familiar. The landmarks remain. But important pieces of his life no longer fit. His home is no longer his, the people around him remember a different version of events, and evidence begins to point toward an unsettling possibility: another Cameron Breakstone belongs to this world.
From there, Dangerous Passage becomes more than a story about an extraordinary ability. Cam must learn how to live in a world that is both familiar and completely changed. He encounters relationships and possibilities that his own life never gave him, including a different connection with Maya, someone he has known since childhood. At the same time, the existence of another Cameron raises difficult questions about identity, responsibility, and whether a person can simply step into the life another version of himself has left behind.
The novel also keeps history close to the center of Cam’s journey. His unusual ability proves valuable beyond the supernatural, allowing him to identify the age of historical objects and eventually find a practical use for something he had often considered more burden than gift.
Set against the historic landscape of St. Augustine, Keith Lammers brings together speculative fiction, history, alternate realities, personal loss, relationships, and the consequences of the choices that shape a life. At its center is a simple but unsettling question: if you found yourself living another version of your own life, would you try to return to the one you lost, or begin again with the life now in front of you?
What Happens When St. Augustine Becomes a Doorway to Another Reality
A Historic City at the Heart of the Story St. Augustine gives Keith Lammers’ DANGEROUS PASSAGE more than a recognizable setting.
Cam Breakstone and the Gift of Reading Time Through Touch
An Ability Cam Has Lived With for Years Many stories begin when an ordinary person suddenly receives an extraordinary power.
Dangerous Passage and the Mystery of a World That Is Almost Home
When Home Stops Feeling Like Home There is something uniquely unsettling about arriving home and discovering that home no longer belongs to you.
Stay connected with Keith Lammers and receive updates about new releases, book news, special announcements, and stories from the world of Dangerous Passage.
