Welcome to Flashback Thursday. This week I’m going to talk about one of my favorite books of all time. My Soul to Keep is a Paranormal Thriller written by one of my favorite authors Tananarive Due, who has mastered the art of the thriller.
This story is more than a decade old but each time I see it on my bookshelf I have to stop myself or I’ll be reading it again. My Soul to Keep, captivated me from the very began and kept me in its choke-hold, gasping throughout its pages.
This is one of the few books I had to read in one night, and I’m a slow reader. By the time the sun was rising in the night sky, I still couldn’t put it down until the last shocking ending. Have you ever had a book just take you for a ride you hadn’t expected?
Ms. Due is a prolific writer who has written about a world few mainstream readers get to see, and few authors write about, the domestic joy of a middle-class African American family, but not only does she show the normalcy of this close, traditional religious family , she also weaves the twisted life of Dewit/David, a hero/villain and immortal into it seamlessly. Due is a unique storyteller that has hints of Stephen King with a sprinkle of Anne Rich in this amazing story. Yet she is in a league all her own.
When Jessica meets and marries the older brilliant, attentive, and ever youthful David. She feels he is everything she wants in a man to start a family with. As much as she loves him, after years of marriage, Jessica still feels something about him is just out of reach.
When people close to Jessica begin to meet violent, mysterious deaths, David makes a startling confession: He’s more than 400 years old. He was part of a sect of Ethiopians who traded their humanity for eternal life. This is a secret he must protect at any cost. Now it’s time for David (according to his sect) to return to his immortal brethren and leave his family behind. He refuses and instead, vows to invoke a forbidden ritual to keep Jessica and his daughter with him forever.
Tananarive Due is a novelist and a creative writing teacher who has worked as a journalist. She won the American Book Award in 2002 for her novel The Living Blood.
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Glynis Rankin 