“Have you ever looked up at the sky and wondered if it was really the layer between us and the rest of the universe? What if it was the other way around, but we've been lied to all this time? What if going up is actually going inside the Earth, and going down is going out?” 

Luke Balena - a dopey, impressionable 26-year-old - is standing on the edge of a hidden cave in the Malibu forest, revisiting a stoned conversation with his friend Wolf before he mysteriously disappeared three days earlier. Is he down there now, joyously exploring an uncharted dimension? 

With nothing to lose, Luke prepares to climb in and find out for himself. But first, one more hit... 

Unpredictable and unforgettable, The Whale in the Cave is Mike Avitabile at his deadpan peak: a whimsical, mesmerizing, and hilarious satire on the consequences of believing in anything. 

"A compelling saga that's hard to put down.” (D. Donovan, senior editor, Midwest Book Review)

“At times, the book's oddities, such as Wolf's circular explanation that his job is having the day off, approach those by such masters of the uncanny as Haruki Murakami... There is a constant, unresolved tension between whether Luke's narration is a goofy, marijuana-fueled perspective on plausible events or if readers have entered a completely separate, off-kilter reality. Avitabile is at his best when he chooses to be unapologetically surreal.” (Kirkus Reviews)