her able hands

I just finished reading M. J. Rose’s The Reincarnationist as part of the MotherTalk blog book tour. Now I’m coming here—even though it has nothing whatsoever to do with gardening or food—to tell you to put this one on your TBR list. What an enjoyable and fast read! I was worried about getting through it because I’ve been on a self-imposed fiction hiatus in an effort to broaden my writerly horizons. It’s been all non-fiction all the time here, and let me tell you, I fall asleep with the book on my face three pages in every night. But, I blazed through The Reincarnationist in a burning ring of cornea fire late at night with the reading lamp holding me steady in its warm glow. It took me three nights and cost me a bit of productivity on the job because my eyeballs were scratched and night-burnt and I couldn’t stop thinking about my own brushes with the possibility of reincarnation.

M. J. clearly did a lot of research for this baby, and I love a good historical novel, but then throw in the bonus of suspense and reincarnation and I’m up all night. The story weaves in and out of present day New York and Rome and ancient Rome at the time of the final put-down of the Vestal Virgins.

I’d never even heard the term Vestal Virgins except in Procol Harum’s A Whiter Shade of Pale Yet another rock and roll song that people spend an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out the meaning of…is it drugs? Is it sex? Is it the holocaust?

Now I want to read a bunch of the source books cited at the end of this novel to learn more about this point in Roman history. I’m also going to take a peek at some of the non-fiction books on reincarnation study.

Have you ever met someone and felt the slap of recognition that goes way beyond “Hey, haven’t we met somewhere before?” Felt that tingly whaaaaaaa? that goes all the way to the point of “Hey now, we’ve been more than intimate you and me, but that’s not possible is it because I’ve never met you before in my life. Except, I’m pretty sure I know what you like for breakfast and I saw what you did to the fishmonger’s wife when her husband was down at the docks picking up the catch of the day.”?

I don’t know if I believe in reincarnation. But then, I’m not sure what I believe in anymore. I do know that I experienced shockingly deep knowing when meeting one particular person. And that I try not to think about it too much because it kind of freaks me out. A decade later—not having seen or spoken to them—I’m certain of one thing. We’ve known each other before.

Once, about seventeen years ago, in my Brooklyn apartment, I sat in meditation in a Sears, Roebuck and Company reading chair from the early 20th Century. I bought it for $20 at a trading post in Grass Valley, California in another incarnation a few years before. And I will admit to the possible influence of a certain herbal mood enhancer upon my, uh, faculties. But the fact of this afternoon alone in my apartment has stayed with me in crystalline detail all these years. (How on earth is it this many years already?)

I sat breathing deeply with my eyes closed, my legs crossed in lotus, feeling the tingling sensations in my body. The afternoon service ended at the Pentacostal church across the street and the parishioners yelled up and down the street to one another in Spanish. But then I was on my feet running along wooden planks cutting through tall grass and the sun scorched the top of my head and the wind blew fierce against my chest as I ran with all of my strength after a retreating train. I yelled but the sound wasn’t anything I had ever spoken before. It sounded very much like the voices in the fish market on Mott Street, in Chinatown, where I stopped to pick up my herbal enhancement and dinner once a week.

Faces gazed out of the dark doorway on the back of the moving car—one of them yelling to me to hurry. But it didn’t sound like “hurry.” Yet I understood the words. And I was a man, and I was racing to jump on that train that was heading back to the nearest outpost for more building materials. I was afraid I wouldn’t catch up and I would be left out there on that endless Plain to freeze to death in the night. I felt anger shoot through me and saw a woman’s face in my mind’s eye, the face of the woman I loved, who waited with my parents, for me to send money from this job building the rails across the continent. I got close enough to touch the cold metal railing—

—my phone rang and I was in my chair in my apartment in Brooklyn with my body humming a note that filled my mind and the room and maybe even echoed up and down the whole street. My face was hot.

So yeah, I can tell you that I really, really enjoyed M.J. Rose’s The Reincarnationist. And if you dig this kind of fast-paced, eventful, suspenseful, character driven, historical read, then you should definitely get your hands on a copy.

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