Before I Wake

Fiction

370

47

2018-06-26 17:47:44

A Canadian fiction debut with the emotional weight ofThe Lovely Bones,Before I Wakereveals how hope can be renewed even in the face of unimaginable sorrow. Tragedy can arrive at any time. In a single moment of distraction, in one misjudgment . . . On a bright spring day, three-year-old Sherry Barrett is left comatose after a hit-and-run accident. When it appears she will never recover, her devastated parents, Simon and Karen, agree to remove her from life support. Amazingly, she doesn’t die – nor does she wake. Meanwhile, the driver of the truck, Henry Denton, attempts suicide. But he doesn’t die either, instead finding himself in a place of darkness, somewhere between this world and the next, invisible to all except a group of mysterious and downtrodden men. Haunted by his own guilt, Henry struggles to understand this limbo, and what he must do to free himself. Under the pressure of caring for their child, the fissures in Simon and Karen’s marriage become gaping wounds, and the family is pushed to the point of collapse. And then they are pushed even further – by the undeniable fact that their little girl, trapped in her living death, is a source of miracles. As the world turns its lens on the family, and the sick and dying arrive to be healed, Simon and Karen must decide whether or not to allow these “pilgrims” access to their daughter. At the same time, a larger battle is brewing – one that has been raging for close to two thousand years, and that might yet claim the lives of Sherry and her family. Part domestic novel, part thriller – contemporary realism touched with the fantastic –Before I Wakeis an exploration of the limits of human strength, of the power of forgiveness, and of the true nature, and cost, of miracles. How do you hold a moment, knowing that it is the last? How do you take in enough to last you through a lifetime of absence? I don’t want to remember her like this – broken and bleeding, the machine pressing air into her tiny lungs. I want to remember yesterday, the way she laughed and ran; so alive, so filled with joy. I want to carry the stones she chose as a reminder of her, smiling and running. But I can’t choose. I know that I’ll remember this room as much as those mornings with the three of us in the big bed, snuggling and tickling and refusing to face the day. I know that I’ll remember these bloodstained bandages as much as I’ll remember last Christmas, her look of wonder as Simon read the note that Santa Claus left her, thanking her for the cookies. I know that I’ll remember the moment I choose to let her go, the moment I feel her last breath, as vividly as I remember that gush of blood and love I felt as I heard her first cry, as I first saw her, tiny and twisted and perfect, wailing to raise the moon. Ashes to ashes. Blood to blood. Cries to silence. –FromBefore I Wake

Random House Canada

9780679313731

1

2018-06-26 17:47:44