"Soul Retrieval" (literary fiction, 61K words) is voice-driven with an innovative literary organization. The chapter headers of "Soul Retrieval" travel the topics of Kahlil Gibran's "The Prophet" and tackle all of life's most profound themes, from Love all the way to Death. The shamanistic practice and ritual of soul-retrieval of course being to find those pieces one has lost along the way in life-to recover them and become whole again.
Delivered with the intimacy of a deeply contemplative and emotionally plastic first person, "Soul Retrieval" is an intimate, voice-driven literary novel centering on one woman's self-reclamation. Mary Dixon's soul retrieval came the hard way; through mires of drug addiction and abuse and a family riddled with mental illness.
The novel begins with a present-day frame: Mary is riding a train in France. She doesn't speak the language and can't find her seat. She wanders from car to car with her overstuffed suitcases, helpless and lost, astonished to find herself within this absurdly apt living metaphor. This symbol of life and its sections: train cars for life-stories, connected together. She begins to recall, to meditate, and so the story begins. Along the way, Mary learns to forgive, to let go of her toxic past. And ultimately Mary finds herself, finds her love, finds her home, finds her identity and her own truth.
