"First, I had to get his body into the boat." This ominous opening
begins a tale of secrets and lies, visions, and hovering spirits. At its
center is Naomi Ash, a young woman who has come of age on the frigid
banks of a western New York lake community called Train Line. Here she
grows up and falls in love in a town where mediums, spiritualists, and
professional clairvoyants hold "psychic fairs" to help make ends meet.
When the skeleton of Peter, Naomi's ex-lover, surfaces, the mystery of
his death must be uncovered. In the process, Naomi, now a clairvoyant
herself, unveils a world where the secrets of the dead cannot stay
buried and where her past must confront her precarious present.
Hailed as "a study of eccentricities, which rises above the merely quirky to address those issues of life, death, memory, and love that preoccupy us all," After Life is a stunning first novel of extraordinary suspense and evocative imagery.
286 pages (July 2000)
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