Book Review: Just Because You're Dead Doesn't Mean You're Gone by Sandy Foster-Morrison

Just Because You're Dead Doesn't Mean You're Gone by Sandy Foster Morrison

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


If you're not "from here," then you might think you know something about East Texas from having watched the recent movie "Bernie." Frankly, the movie is spot on at revealing the snippy, elitist, prejudiced thinking prevalent there (and the horrific twang of speech!).

But this author: grew up there. Her memoir of that experience will make you cringe and groan if you are from here and it will make you exclaim in disbelief if you're not. But I can tell you from my own Piney Woods roots that her account of "how it was (is)" is all true.

Ms. Foster-Morrison has a breezy tone that sets the reader at ease right away. She is fiercely honest, a laudable act of courage, given her ancestry. I commend her for this.

Her story, a black comedy with tragic moments, is the story of "every-woman": how marriage, child-rearing, society and family influence and rule our becoming and if we are tenacious to a fault, as this author, having the will to become who she herself determines to be in spite of overwhelming odds against her, how we survive.

Personally, I deeply identified with the main premise: that those who have left their fleshly bodies have not "died," but in fact carry on communicating with us from beyond, especially when our relationships on this plane have unfinished business.

If you are looking to fantasize and be carried away, this is not the book for you. If you are looking for a meaty story, full of unexpected turns and raw emotion, one that will make you laugh and cry, and leave you deep in thought, read this book.

I dare you.





View all my reviews

Book Review: The Dividing Season by Karen Casey Fitzjerrell

The Dividing Season by Karen Casey Fitzjerrell

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This book is about my bone-country: the land where my ancestors have lived, died, and are buried. So I would know if it were not an authentic tale. Believe me. It is.

Ms. Casey's prose sets you directly into landscape, weather, and sky you can see and feel. I think she must have sat a whole year on her porch observing. That's how enjoyable, distinct and palpably different each scene is from the next.

Though this book is set in the late 1800's,I know I have met and rubbed elbows with the gritty characters she creates, Texas men I love and hate, the kind of men whose stock carries on despite this unforgiving land and the working of it.

The heroine, a formidable, passionate woman, faces her inheritance and her fate with graceful power, loving the land and longing for more. Alongside her character the reader experiences intense adventure and faces conflicts and questions of family loyalty; propriety; women's rights; the right to bear arms; discrimination and prejudice; and the ever-present dig of a rancher's heels into the land, insisting, demanding from it, a decent living made from sweat and sheer will.

This author has a sweet and sour taste in her mouth for all that Texas women are and she has told us the truth about how we became so in eloquent prose.

You'll need a porch and a nice long stretch of afternoon to read this delightful story because you won't want to put it down.





View all my reviews

"i cannot teach you to pray in words"

Image:  "between the worlds" 36X36" acrylic on gallery wrapped canvas.  copyright D. Ellis Phelps, 2014

Original available through Intermezzo Gallery, Boerne, TX   (830) 331.9400

Prints available through SmugMug:  here.

(super important hint!:  my paintings are only available as 16X20" (or larger) gallery wrapped canvas prints and as greeting cards.  So click on "canvas" at the top of the page in Smug Mug.  special note about this painting:  It'll look best on a square canvas.  Thanks!)

 

I cannot teach you how to pray in words....And I cannot teach you the prayer of the seas and the forests and the mountains.  But you who are born of the mountains and the forests and the seas can find their prayer in your heart...

The Prophet, Kahlil Gibran

Since 2006 and the transition of my in-laws and my parents from their forms of flesh to their light bodies, I have spent a great deal of time between the worlds.

These incarnate beings I learned to love and hate and love again have come to me in the most profound ways, letting me know their presence beyond the veil is one of large, ongoing aliveness, letting me know their pain, their need for my offerings of love and forgiveness. 

My father-in-law’s scent:  spice.  My mother-in-law:  heavy perfume.  My father:  cedar.  And by arrangement with my mother (a la Houdini):  pine. 

My father has visited me in dreams, willing me to do his bidding on this plane, else he could not rest.  My mother has spoken me awake, me certain she stood beside my bed.

What I have understood from these communications is this: 

Who we are on this side, we are on the other.  This is why we pray for the dead, so that The Light knows its own and it is only by Grace (by prayer) that between the worlds, between lives, we are received and we are known.

How do you communicate between the worlds?  Have you experienced the out-of-body  presence of someone you have loved or not loved?  How do you process the messages you have received?