ABIDING FLAME

Lukas’ (The Spirit Connection, 2014, etc.) spiritual novel tells the story of a carpenter and his angelic guide exploring the world of reincarnation.

On a desperate night in 2015, Phil Nash puts a gun to his head and pulls the trigger. His life has been rough since he was 10 and he had his first vision after witnessing a woman killed in a car wreck: “A silver cord appeared in the sky, and her misty likeness rose at an angle from her body and disappeared along the cord.” He’s been haunted by ghosts, despite the best efforts of doctors to find a medical cure. The visions cause tension in his eventual marriage to Pam, as does the collapse of the family contracting business. Phil gets injured on a subsequent job, forcing him to file for bankruptcy and leading to an addiction to scotch and pain meds. The final straw is getting a divorce notice from Pam. Instead of dying, however, Phil is visited by an angel named Karma sent by God to help save Phil’s soul. Karma shows Phil the life he should have had—that of a powerful medium. Together they explore Phil’s past lives to discover his true purpose. Lukas’ prose is simple and concise, giving readers the sense at times that they are reading a cozy children’s novel. The story structure is familiar—a troubled protagonist is shown the light by an otherworldly helper—and its didactic nature is hard to ignore. Some of Lukas’ ideas may prove a bit off-putting. When Phil asks about the moral nature of rapists and terrorists, Karma tells him: “Some people are born to hurt others just as most are born to be good. This is hard to understand, but those who died on Sept. 11, 2001, for example, planned with their guides before birth to depart on that day. They repaid karmic debts by accepting to pass in this manner.” Too flat to function as effective fiction, the book is unlikely to persuade many to Lukas’ view of the cosmos.

A clumsy spiritual allegory that makes bold claims about life and death.