Just in time for that time of year when ghosts and goblins lurk in every shadow, and the crash landing of a falling leaf can send chills down your spine, comes this interesting book by the consultant to CBS's Ghost Whisperer. Mary Ann Winkowski, a devout Catholic, happily married mom, and seer of the spirits of the dead offers us a tantalizing view "beyond the veil".
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Using a gift apparently passed down through her Italian ancestors, she talks to those who have crossed over the line between life and death, and yet have not left the earthly plane. Some of the stories she tells will have you laughing for hours afterwards -- and others of her tales will make your skin crawl and have you peeking around at flitting shadows, screaming when the cat brushes up against your unsuspecting shins! Mary Ann offers the earthbound spirits a pathway (the legendary white light, which she claims to be able to make on demand) to eternity.
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She even claims to have 'seen', in a round about way, evidence of guardian spirits who have gone beyond the light yet have offered support and care to those recently dead. Angels? Departed beloveds who carried the love into eternity? Perhaps.
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From the time we're concieved, we travel toward death. Death, however, often seems to sneak up on us like a theif in the night, taking away all of the things we'd planned in our disbelief that time is limited for all of us. For some, death is a release, a balm. Either way, it is the last, ultimate mystery, one we cannot answer until we, as individuals in most cases, experience it.
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Where do we go, when life departs us? What do we do? Do we lurk at the funeral home to see what the still-living have to say to us? Do we look into that bright white light and go on without a backward glance into whatever dreams may lie waiting for us in the last great unknown?
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Mary Ann Winkowski attempts to answer some of these questions -- and others -- while opening up windows and doors of the imagination with total abandon. Her stories of coming across truly evil spirits, things that scared even a woman accustomed to routinely speaking with the dead, will definately make you wonder about the truths of the struggle between good and evil. Humanity is still humanity, according to her, even when the frail shell of flesh is fallen by the wayside.
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Having seen a few inexplicable things in my lifetime, I'll hold judgment on whether this is a fiction or nonfiction book. Judge for yourself; my opinion is only one, one which has no proof either way of what comes after the moment death arrives with its cold fingers to separate us from all we've been aware of for a lifetime, be it short or long.
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Any book that makes a person think is a positive. Ghostly soft flags to Mrs. Winkowski, flying on a shivery breeze ... to keep us on our fleshy toes!
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Special thanks to Hachette Book Group for the chance to review this interesting book by Mary Ann Winkowski. For information on other books offered or about to be offered by HBGUSA, please visit their website.
... Comments? Questions?
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-- The Fireside Reader
3 comments:
what do you think when you know a loved one has passed and have a dream with him in it and other family members and there is danger and you actually wake up to find you are crying? real tears in your eyes?
I think the pain of passage is as much for the still-living as it is for those who have passed on to the other side. It is for this reason, after all, that we humans hold funereal ceremonies and attend to the body with such respect so often.
As to that, yes, I have dreamed so. More than once. Sometimes the dream was prophetic. Other times, a composite of the subconscious, dreams originating in the oldest part of the communicative brain talking in the most efficient way possible to the thinking mind, the rational mind of a lingual-communicator being.
I love a good mystery. Not just books, either!
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