ADAM'S GIFT

Adams presents a spiritual memoir of her experience as a mother facing unimaginable grief.

The author writes that her bond with her firstborn son, Adam Hamel, formed on July 23, 1982—the day she discovered she was pregnant. She notes that she’d always had an open and honest dialogue with him, which continued as he reached adulthood and found work as a bartender at the Windmill Cove in San Joaquin Valley, California. In December 2010, Adam asked his mother to accompany him to a local church, where he laughed and joked with parishioners who understood that “when it came to protecting his family, his friends, or the less fortunate, Adam was a force to be reckoned with.” On January 23, 2011, Adam suffered a severe traumatic brain injury in a car accident and was declared dead the following day. In the midst of her grief, the author discovered that “dead doesn’t mean ‘lost,’” and that Adam’s energy had simply changed forms. Since the tragedy, the author asserts, she’s continued to communicate with him via shamans, spiritual interpreters, a crystal skull, and an app called Ghost Radar, while furthering her own spiritual development. Adams’ debut memoir is an effectively concise account of a mother navigating her own grief while also finding ways to help others heal. Her narrative deftly balances recollections of Adam’s accident and its aftermath with the memories of other family members and events that shaped her childhood; in a particularly poignant section, she shares a passage from her mother’s journal describing her beloved Aunt Bessie, who died in 2007. Adams vividly renders her story of her life’s journey, and her sense of exuberance is evident throughout; the book appears to target readers who share the author’s beliefs about the afterlife, and it should appeal to that audience.

An emotionally nuanced story of a parent’s bond with her son.