Touching and funny, this paranormal Mary Poppins story requires a big leap of faith.
Life takes a supernatural twist when the 150-year-old ghost of an African-American slave follows a family home to Los Angeles.
When Soeder and his family attend his brother-in-law’s wedding at a former plantation home near New Orleans, he encounters more than the usual festivities. Staying in a cottage that was once slave quarters, Soeder comes in contact with the irrepressible Haddie—the 150-year-old ghost of an African-American slave who has haunted the cottage since her death. Haddie can speak to Soeder and read his thoughts, and she promptly makes her opinions felt. Her ability to ice a room, literally, with her disapproval leads to many amusing moments, as do her nonstop questions about a world that she cannot physically touch. Although it may read like fiction, this is, according to the author, a true account. No one else can see or hear Haddie, including Soeder’s wife, Nadine, who accepts this supernatural visitor and seems remarkably unalarmed when Haddie follows the couple and their two young children home to Los Angeles. There, Haddie takes up residence with the family, sleeping in the couple’s closet and caring for their children—which essentially involves putting thoughts in their minds that persuade them to behave. Much of the book follows Haddie’s gleeful discovery of modern technology, from airplanes and alarm clocks to cars and computers. But there are also darker moments, as when she recalls the horrors of slavery and observes the ways in which the world has “grown both better and worse.” Haddie brings a fresh perspective to Soeder’s life, raising intriguing questions about the meaning of life and death. And yet it’s never clear how or why the author feels so at ease with this otherworldly turn of events. His lack of skepticism might make more sense if presented within the context of his previous experiences with the supernatural, described in his other works but only briefly mentioned here. Nevertheless, if you’re willing to suspend disbelief, this is a charmingly quirky ghost story.
Touching and funny, this paranormal Mary Poppins story requires a big leap of faith.Pub Date: July 19, 2011
ISBN: 978-1463716172
Page Count: 162
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 22, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
There are many lessons to be learned in these pages–not least of them, to keep your eyes open for oncoming teenagers.
"I'm a number on their ledger," writes O'Malley, in this thoughtful memoir of consumer David versus insurer Goliath. "And they're dedicated to a new medical oath: This above all, do no harm to our financials."
O'Malley suffered major spinal trauma when a sleeping 17-year-old driver rammed her car one August afternoon. Unable to work, and at both physical and emotional distance from her young adult son, she finds herself in the early pages of her memoir to be a kind of surrogate aunt to a young immigrant girl and a surrogate child to an aunt of her own; her portraits of these characters, and indeed of most of the figures in the narrative, are marked by affection, warmth and knowing humor. But the tale takes on a dark cast as O'Malley soon stands accused of being a malingerer and denied long-term disability pay while enduring more and more physical distress in the wake of her accident. In quest of relief, she tries the expected route–namely, scheduling appointments at her HMO and undergoing tests to discover why her pain should persist months after the accident. What follows is a Kafkaesque sequence of misunderstandings and evasions, as, by her account, one specialist after another administers the wrong test, takes the wrong X-ray and eventually cuts into the wrong section of her spine. In the subsequent chapters, she becomes something of an authority on her pain, providing at least some rebuttal to arrogant doctors who, one by one, ask what fine medical school she attended to allow her any opinion in the matter of her own health. O'Malley's unhappy tale ends well enough, thanks to the help of a doctor on the opposite end of the country from the angry neurologist who becomes her bête noire. Readers may be a tad frustrated, though, to discover that the real ending is a settlement whose terms she cannot discuss, inasmuch as she has discussed everything else so candidly.
There are many lessons to be learned in these pages–not least of them, to keep your eyes open for oncoming teenagers.Pub Date: June 24, 2004
ISBN: 1-4134-5487-9
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A collection that will surely interest readers already devoted to Virginia City lore, but that may not grab a general...
An amalgamation of ghost stories set in the remote town where Mark Twain honed his skills 140 years ago.
During a trip to Virginia City in 1999, Bruns and a friend approached a building with the intent of exploring it. As they entered, however, she stopped abruptly–this place seems haunted, she said. Bruns had always found supernatural phenomena such as ghosts fascinating, but had never known quite what to make of claims that otherworldly beings exist. This experience, though, intrigued and annoyed him simultaneously. How could she sense ghosts when he couldn't? He decided to investigate further by interviewing certain people in Virginia City. Tales were "hurled" at Bruns, "unsolicited at the very mention" that he was collecting ghost stories. As a result, many of the stories name actual people and, "at least in their minds, actual events." Inundated with varying versions and copious detail, Bruns decided he would "combine different stories from different people into a single narrative, just to capture all the many ways in which spirits choose to manifest themselves." This was a dubious decision, as many of the stories are simply not compelling as fiction and track poorly as nonfiction. The word "true" muddies the interpretation of the stories, as does his caveat that "Like Mark Twain, I see no reason why I should let the truth get in the way of a good story." After chronicling the hauntings of specific sites–the Silver Terrace Cemetery, the Old Funeral Parlor, a D Street Residence, the Gold Hill Hotel and the Pioneer Emporium, to name a few–Bruns provides briefly researched histories that work nicely. Four maps at the back of the book aid understanding of northern Nevada, Virginia City itself and two of the haunted locales.
A collection that will surely interest readers already devoted to Virginia City lore, but that may not grab a general audience.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-9745217-1-X
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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