[plt-scheme] Eval, and a strange syntax transformer error

Hi.
I'm trying to port something to v299.*.
The situation is: My database is a bunch of files which I read and eval
at runtime. This all worked fine in v209, but with 299.400 it works only
from the repl. When running a repl-less mzscheme with a file on the
command line, eval throws the following:

  compile: bad syntax; function application is not allowed, because no 
  #%app syntax transformer is bound in: (make <publication> :storage
  (make <file> :path ...

where the (make ...) expression is what I'm eval'ing. Yes, this is using
Swindle.

Is this an issue with eval (buggily?) using a bad default reader?

Thanks.
-- 
Ittai