What if you could travel to the land where the dead resided? Would you go there and try to bring back your loved ones who have passed on?
From the title of the book, I thought it would be about a girl who died and then came back from the dead. But I was wrong. She comes back to life in a much different way.
In this fairy tale, Sophie’s parents have died and left her alone in the world. She now lives with a grandmother that she has no love for. When someone dies, this person goes to the City of the Dead. It is up to this person’s loved one to take the hazardous trip to this city and release the spirit of the one who has died.
Sophie is determined to travel to the City of the Dead, but she doesn’t want to do so in order to release the spirits of her parents. She wants to take them back home with her.
Sophie makes the journey north to this city with her grandmother. Things are cold and silent between them, but as the trip progresses, Sophie sees this cold woman’s emotions begin to melt. And it has something to do with an old letter she reads each night before she goes to sleep.
Sophie learns about life and love on this hazardous journey. She learns how to take care of herself in about any situation. And she learns how to truly care for others.
It is hard to let go of a loved one when death arrives. I’ve known people who were still in deep mourning fifteen, even twenty, years after the death of a child or a parent. I understand how easy it is to become trapped and always feel that this person should still be alive and there with you, but becoming stuck in that one moment in time does no harm to the dead person; it only harms the one who is still living. This fairy tale is a perfect representation of how that happens.
I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. If you would like to purchase a copy of this book for your own, please click on the Amazon link below.
Amazon Link: The Girl Who Came Back to Life
Recommended Article: How Fairy Tales Connect with People – Guest Post by Craig Staufenberg
Favorite Sentences:
She explained how love lay at the heart of good bread, how she had to pull the warmth from deep in her heart and let it flow into her hands until her fingertips mingled and the dough abandoned its toughness and responded to even the lightest touch.
A liveliness the old woman no longer held brightened these pictures, and the more photos Sophie set back into perfect position, the greater the ocean seemed between the glowing woman in the pictures and the dry, stiff woman who had coldly taken her granddaughter in.
Two drops held back from joining the others, caught in place by her words and her gaze and her longing.
With each pull she felt the frozen winds bite at her warm body, until she took one final torturous tug at that rope of memory and history, loss and love, and thrust herself back into the world of the living.
New Word Learned:
amaranth bread – This is a bread made with amaranth flour, of course. This is a very nutritious bread, and there are many recipes on for it on the Internet.
About the Author:
Craig Staufenberg is a writer and filmmaker who lives in New York City. You can learn more about him and his works at http://www.craigstaufenberg.com/about/.
