Dark Matters, a novel by Boulder author Paul M. Levitt, explores the unfathomable space beneath the surface of existence by dissecting all matter of human experience, from religion to politics, sexuality to war. Like the controversial subjects it broaches, Dark Matters vacillates from pleasing to disturbing as Levitt explores both a narrative and an ideology.

"Kabbalists believe that like unfathomable stretches of space, most people are dark matter," he writes. "You never know what they're really thinking; and yet you can feel the gravitational pull. Whether that force emanates from prejudice or principle, faith or facts, you know that behind the surface lies a deeper, darker reality."

Set in Colorado and New Mexico against the backdrop of McCarthyism, Dark Matters hits on political issues that reverberate with lessons for our own sensitive political times.

The central figure of the book is Ben Cohen, an avidly political veteran of the Korean War with socialist leanings. A Jewish immigrant from Russia, he grew up poor in New York City. After returning from the war, he becomes a student at the University of Colorado, where the president of the university is in the process of dismissing faculty and staff rumored to promote communist ideas.

Ben quickly becomes embroiled in the campus political struggle, leading him and his comrades to join forces with the Salt of the Earth strike, a strike by Mexican-American mine workers against the Empire Zinc Corp. in Bayard, N.M., with whom the CU staffers have been accused of sympathizing.

Ben is torn between two lovers, between political ideals and traitorous alliances and by his own desires and imperfections. He is separated from one of his lovers, a wealthy southern belle, by class and prejudice and from his other lover, the Mexican- American wife of a union protestor, by her marriage and her religion.

Out of the gate, Dark Matters comes across as ostentatious and heavy-handed.

It is not a book to be taken lightly.

The final chapters are profoundly visceral, driven by an intensity that redeems the work of its early lethargy and shakes the reader's expectations with a finale that is jarring, yet strangely comforting.

Alex Gorelik is a freelance writer living in Denver.