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THE MERCY OF THIN AIR by Ronlyn Domingue

THE MERCY OF THIN AIR

by Ronlyn Domingue

Pub Date: Sept. 13th, 2005
ISBN: 0-7432-7880-1
Publisher: Atria

Debut novelist Domingue weaves a tapestry of lost spirits and misplaced loves.

Raziela Nolan, outspoken birth control advocate and determined future medical student, fell to her death in the swimming pool of her lover Andrew O’ Connell. Raziela’s death took place in 1920s New Orleans, but her spirit has hung around in a kind of between-space for nearly 80 years, leaving her to learn the rules of the spirit realm while keeping watch among mortals. And what haunts this ghost? In the years after her death, Andrew, Raziela’s one and only true love, disappeared, and she still misses him. Her ghost is drawn intermittently over the decades to Andrew’s memory: She can smell him in old furniture, in places that he frequented. When a young couple, Amy and Scott, buys one of Andrew’s old bookcases at an estate sale, Raziela decides to follow them. (“I liked her,” Raziela says of Amy, “because she reminded me of myself. I liked him because her brazen little nature didn’t scare him. They were darling together.”) While Raziela, the story’s compelling narrator, lingers in their apartment, Amy and Scott are haunted by ghosts even she can’t see. While watching them, hoping to find clues about Andrew, she also begins to take note of their deteriorating marriage. Amy, it seems, harbors long-buried feelings for a lost ghost of her own.

Sweet, entertaining love stories that could have used a better ending.