Naomi Ash was born in New Orleans and raised by her mother, Patsy, a
medium who schooled her young daughter in the parlor-trick chicanery of
the trade. From Naomi recreating presences with table cloths to
providing the voice of the dead by talking through a fan, their act is
part theater, part magic, and a little too much playing with the letter
of the law. Eventually they must beat a hasty--and forced--retreat from
New Orleans, relocating to Train Line, New York.
A sleepy village founded and inhabited by others with a spiritualist
bent, Train Line is populated with card readers, table levitators, and
crystal-shop owners. Low-rent "Psychic Faires" are held at the local
Holiday Inn, and Patsy's newest creation, "The Mother Galina Psychic
Hour," is on the local radio station. The town is a curious mix between
old school "table rappers" and the New Age, and it is here that Naomi
comes of age, learns the trade, and falls in love. But love is not only
a many splendored thing--it can be dangerous as well. And for a young
woman caught between fraud and truth, between the world of the living
and the world of the dead, and between the secrets and lies of her
youth, the past and present will come together in a rush of truth and
consequence.
Hailed as "a study of eccentricities, which rises above the merely
quirky to address those issues of life, death, memory, and love that
preoccupy us all," After Life is a stunning first novel of
extraordinary suspense and evocative imagery.
