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Kenya endures every woman's worst nightmare when her husband and eight-year-old son are critically injured a year apart in vehicular accidents. The intriguing sci-fi/visionary hybrid novel focuses on Kenya and her eight-year-old son, Levi, as they negotiate their inherited gift of spiritual sight before and after the terrible accident. Levi's physical recovery is uncertain, but his spiritual survival is certain and rich with adventure. While Kenya has avoided dealing with "the gift," wanting only to live an ordinary life, young Levi briefly explores other realities in his daylight visions and in his nighttime dreams before the nearly fatal accident, a preview of the strange journeys he will take through similar doors of perception during his lengthy near-death experience.
During his coma, Levi's awareness drifts away to a place in the spiritual realm where he should not be and yet needs to be to create balance in the world, according to a luminous guide who watches over him. His consciousness switches with a seventeen-year-old high school athlete named Sean, while Sean endures living in Levi's frail, comatose body during his hospital stay. Inexplicably, Levi's father finds himself in the body of Sean's high school coach, so father and son are temporarily reunited to unravel the mysteries of their new condition.
This interchange of conscious awareness is an old theme brought to new life. The tale attempts to capture the essence of conscious awareness between and beyond the liminal boundary of life and death. The writing is typical of young adult fare, and the story will likely resonate with adult readers as well. At times, the multiple plot threads lose focus in long passages meant to emphasize the characters' wrenching emotional states, but the story's intention is crystal clear as it veers toward a surprise ending.