After sam­pling Sono­ran Desert toad tox­in for the first time, Seth Lor­inczi said, ​“I know this sounds crazy, but I feel like I’ve been giv­en my life back.” Then, reflect­ing on this moment in his mem­oir, Lor­inczi writes, ​“I don’t care if it was trip­py or trite: It was true.” Much of the time, that’s exact­ly how Death Trip reads: it is trip­py, trite, and true. It pos­es the ques­tion, ​“What if I addressed my inter­gen­er­a­tional trau­ma with psy­che­delics?” Well, it’s more than that — it’s also about a strained mar­riage and self-explo­ration. Span­ning decades, con­ti­nents, and states of mind, this sto­ry feels like Jonathan Safran Foer’s Every­thing Is Illu­mi­nat­ed with a mind-bend­ing twist.

While drugs may seem like the stand­out ele­ment, Lorinczi’s accounts of psy­che­del­ic trips are among the book’s least inter­est­ing parts. Hear­ing about some­one else’s drug trip can be as bor­ing as hear­ing about some­one else’s dream. Lor­inczi writes these parts well, but they’re not as cap­ti­vat­ing as, say, his mouth-water­ing descrip­tions of Hun­gar­i­an food, or his recon­struc­tion of a har­row­ing night in his father’s life in which the Rus­sians bat­tled the Ger­mans in Hungary. 

In oth­er words, the real meat of the sto­ry is Lor­inczi’s fam­i­ly his­to­ry. Lor­inczi intro­duces the quirky, com­plex fam­i­ly mem­bers who col­or the book’s pages. He chron­i­cles both his father’s upbring­ing in Budapest and his own rela­tion­ship with his late moth­er, who died when he was young. Lor­inczi then turns to his father’s own mem­oirs and oth­er fam­i­ly mem­bers’ accounts, and makes a trip to the very sites where his family’s his­to­ry transpired. 

While the book is divid­ed into six parts, it more clear­ly breaks down into a ​“home” sec­tion and an ​“away” sec­tion. Lor­inczi pro­vides ample back­sto­ry, describ­ing his rela­tion­ship with his father as well as with his wife. He recounts his wed­ding day and a cru­cial con­cert he played with his band before trou­ble began brew­ing. In this ​“home” sec­tion, he begins exper­i­ment­ing with drugs. It is his trip-induced epipha­nies that lead him to Budapest, where he goes in search of his family’s ghosts.