Motherless Soul

General Fiction

By Steve Lindahl

Publisher : All Things That Matter Press

ABOUT Steve Lindahl

Steve Lindahl
Hopatcong Vision Quest recently won an EVVY Merit Award in the historical fiction category from the Colorado Independent Publishers Association. This novelĀ is Steve Lindahl's third, his first with Solstice Publishing. Steve Lindahl's first two novels, Motherless Soul and White Horse Regr More...

Description

Emily Vinson's entire life was impacted by the loss of her mother when she was 2 years old. At 82 Emily contacts a hypnotist hoping to draw out hidden memories and discover as much as possible about the short time she spent with the woman who gave her life. Glen Wiley, the hypnotist, teaches her more about herself than she had expected. He helps her bring out memories of many past lives, including an experience that took place on a smoke filled battlefield. All of Emily's lives have had the same tragic event, the loss of her mother at a young age. Her soul is caught in what Glen calls circularity, meaning that the tragedy will occur again and again unless she can break the pattern. She and Glen must revisit her past lives and use what they learn to find the other souls who are part of the circle. They must use the past to change the future. Emily's stubborn desire to know her mother is realized in intricate and unsettling ways no one could have imagined possible.

This is a story about people trying to predict and prevent a future tragedy by looking at events that occurred in past lives. I like to call it a "Who will do it" as opposed to a "Who done it" mystery. Much of the novel is set during the civil war. That period is particularly interesting to me because my great-grandfather fought for the Union. He won the medal of honor and wrote an autobiography detailing his adventures. He's not in the book, but I like to think his spirit is with it.

Motherless Soul by Steve Lindahl is a mystery of a very unusual kind. Based on Lindahl's excellent knowledge of hypnotic past-lives regression and of history, particularly the Civil War Era, the author draws us into the characters' lives as they intertwine both in modern times and in those past.

The interesting premise of Motherless Soul is that souls can exist across time bound together in a recurring nexus in which certain central relationships and events repeat over and over again. In this book, the event is the death of a mother at the very beginning of her daughter's life. In the present time that death is attributed to accident. However, the daughter, Emily, now an older woman, tries to learn more about her mother. Through hypnosis, it is revealed that the death had actually been a murder.

Emily and Glen, the hypnotherapist, begin a journey to identify the interconnected souls as they exist in the here and now and to prevent the next murder. Their search brings the reader into contact with a variety of characters as they are living in the present and as they have lived in the past. Most particularly, we meet them in their Civil War Era existences.

The resulting story is one of love and jealousy, madness and determination, and ultimately of mystery. Not only does Lindahl tell a gripping tale but also he makes the reader give serious thought to the nature of past lives. (Kenneth Weene, author of Widow's Walk)