October 24th, 2008
AARON'S CROSSING:An Inspiring True Ghost Story
By Linda Alice Dewey
by Connie Rossman
Four Stars
The narrator of story is unusual. He’s a ghost. And this is the story his channeler or interpreter received from him after she picked him up at an old cemetery.
Dewey calls the book “creative nonfiction,” because his story was filtered through her and thus colored by her own interpretation of what she was hearing. But that doesn’t interfere with the absorbing tale of a young man who died in 1922 and the story of his life, starting with his father kidnapping him as a four-year-old in Ireland and stealing him away to America. For a long time, Aaron didn’t know his father had killed a man at a pub and was using him as a safety measure so they could get passage across the ocean.
Aaron’s life with his father was brutal. The man never spoke except to order him around, never talked to him with affection—never talked much at all, apparently. And his deep daily silence and manipulative nature would eventually scar his son’s personality and hobble his own chances at life. Aaron finally escaped his father and found a woman he could love; but when she died in mourning for a lost child, he abandoned their other young children and struck out, wanting “to be left alone.” That would turn on him after he died in a farm accident, making him unable to pass to a higher plane until he learned to trust another human being. The “crossing” part of the title doesn’t refer to a bridge or a physical crossing, but to a spirit’s ability to leave the earthly plane.
Written in a smooth and flowing style, the book is hard to put down. I read it until I finished it, absorbed in everything that happened. It’s a mark of truly good writing when the author captures you from Page One, and regardless of how you may feel about ghosts or channelers, you will find this a fascinating read.
A good book and a compelling story.
Reviewed by C. L. Rossman.
This Review can also be found here.
