Science, Spirit, and the Existential Void: A Review of Brad Fox's "Another Bone-Swapping Event"

By Tony Huang

Another Bone-Swapping Event, by Brad Fox (Astra House, November 2025)

Brad Fox’s Another Bone-Swapping Event is a hypnotic odyssey through transformation, identity, and the unfathomable depths of spiritual and cultural encounter. This extraordinary nonfiction work defies neat categorization, weaving together science writing, pragmatic history, and poetic spirituality into a narrative as rich and complex as the Amazonian jungle in which the author was submerged. It is a text that refuses the comfort of predictability, much like the journey it chronicles: an intended ten-day spiritual retreat abruptly mutated into an open-ended, civilization-altering exile during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The premise itself bristles with irony—Fox and a diverse group of Western professionals, from mental health practitioners to molecular biologists and veterans, find themselves ensnared in the remote Peruvian Cordillera Escalera Reserve. The isolation is more than geographical; it is existential. As they map the verdant yet inescapable home crafted by circumstance, Another Bone-Swapping Event reveals itself as a profound meditation on transformation that is often painful, contradictory, and utterly unexpected.

The heart of the narrative lies in the rigorous plant medicine regimen, far removed from superficial “spiritual tourism.” Guided by esteemed curanderos like Miguel, the participants undertake prolonged, intense diets of Amazonian plants—each selected for its specific spiritual and physical potency. These medicines, like the magenta globules and sauna offering “rooting power” and the fierce Chiric Sanango for bone healing, demand respect, intention, and complete commitment. The story of Miguel’s own shattered knee, healed against medical odds through a six-week plant diet, underscores not only the power of these ancient practices but also the distinct worldview they embody: one of sacred contract and accountability, where injury is punishment for spiritual lapse.

What distinguishes Fox’s work is the uncanny interplay between the analytical Western mind and the visceral, sometimes ineffable Amazonian experience. Szilvia, the molecular biologist working on Huntington’s disease, epitomizes this fusion. Through plant insights that transcended sterile lab confines, she glimpses early disease markers far sooner than conventional science acknowledges, a revelation born of intuition harmonizing with analysis. Meanwhile, Fox himself confronts what he terms the “passionate Nada”—a terrifying dismantling of identity, a scream into existential void where all preconceived structures of meaning collapse. This raw emotional abyss challenges the reader to engage with transformation not as a soothing epiphany but as a profound rupture.

The text further complicates its exploration through stories like Oleg, a Russian oligarch haunted by the dark spiritual residues of his wealth’s origins. His experience throws into sharp relief the uneasy fusion of personal guilt and external forces, prompting uneasy questions about the nature of spiritual revelation and the shadows it casts.

Fox distills this intricate journey into three “mirrors of reality”: the mirror of death—cold, stark, stripping away all sense but raw existence; the mirror of life, embracing multiplicity, forgiveness, and endless attempts; and the mirror of Masha, an unforgiving ego check exposing hypocrisy and self-serving spiritual ambitions. These conceptual lenses frame the narrative’s central thesis: true transformation is not the transcendence of difficulty but an altered “witnessing” of reality and consequence.

In the aftermath of this indefinite exile, consequences ripple beyond the physical realm. Fox and his partner Esther’s painful separation, prompted by the medicine’s brutal clarity, reveals a transformation that is not gentle but fiercely honest. Others, like Szilvia, commit to ongoing immersion in Amazonian life, embodying the radical, unsettling permanence transformation may demand.

Another Bone-Swapping Event is itself a bone swap, an unsettling exchange of Western rationalism for indigenous wisdom, of control for surrender, of easy answers for complicated truths. It leaves readers pondering whether transformation truly frees us or merely reshuffles the boundaries of our spiritual prisons. Fox’s narrative is a masterwork of stylistic dexterity and intellectual rigor. It plunges us into the murky, luminous heart of change—the kind that fractures and remakes, that wounds and heals, that challenges the limits of identity itself.

This incisive, poetic, and deeply human work invites us all to reconsider what it means to change, and whether change, at its most profound, is never quite what we expect.

Tony Huang, PhD, is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Hong Kong Review. He is also the founder of Metacircle Fellowship, Metacircle (Hong Kong) Culture and Education Co., Ltd. and Metaeducation. He works as a guest-editor for SmokeLong Quarterly. His poems and translations have appeared in Mad Swirl, The Hong Kong Review, The Best Small Fictions Anthology Selections 2020, Tianjin Daily, Binhai Times, SmokeLong Quarterly, Nankai Journal, Large Ocean Poetry Quarterly, Yangcheng Evening News and other places.

Copy editor: Nancy He

Intern copy editor: Andrew Chan