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Kathi Morehead
Author
White Night

Jo Campbell lived a brilliant life, or so she thought until she died. Denied entrance to heaven, adrift in darkness, she meets an unwilling guide: her own sarcastic Soul. Soul takes the unwilling Jo on a journey back through her life, a review that angers, humbles, and ultimately enlightens her. Jo’s ultimate lesson teaches her that her imperfections are her salvation.

Reviews
Kirkus Indie Reviews

Joanna “Jo” Lynn Anderson Campbell is dead. To her chagrin, the widow and mother of two didn’t go straight to heaven. Instead, she’s stuck in a kind of limbo with only one other entity for company—her very chatty, sometimes-bossy Soul. At first, the self-righteous Jo is upset she hasn’t been granted immediate entry into the afterlife despite having lived a good life on Earth: “My anger seems to be focused on the faith that sustained me in life. Was all that for nothing?” she wonders in the first panicked moments after her demise. But Soul aims to show the reluctant Joanna that her life as the “perfect daughter, wife, mother, grandmother” wasn’t so perfect after all. Indeed, at first, Jo’s existence seemed blessedly humdrum—almost unbelievably so. She grew up with two loving parents in the small, Norman Rockwell–esque town of Chestertown, Maryland, in the late 1950s, married young, and had two children. But Morehead gradually and effectively complicates the narrative as Soul urges Jo to look back on her childhood, her youthful friendships, her romance with her husband, and her marriage. Slowly, Soul—who’s sometimes an impatient teacher—gets Jo to understand that her belief in her perfect life was a fantasy that allowed her to avoid difficult emotions. Occasionally, Soul gives Jo a glimpse at what others around her were doing in the past, but more often, Soul pushes Jo to confront her own uncomfortable memories. This philosophical novel starts out rather slowly, and some of its readers may find that Jo’s prickly attitude, combined with her rose-colored view of the past, will require some patience to get through. But eventually it becomes clear that this unsympathetic characterization is all part of the author’s plan. By the end of the novel, she ably shows how Soul gradually allows Jo to come to the conclusion that “Human beings are MEANT to be imperfect.”

A thoughtful fantasy about the lies that we tell ourselves about our identities and our choices.

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