Book Review: Dead Mentors

Dead Mentors

by Sandra Nichols

In 2005, John Burns, a clairvoyant therapist, provides a reading for a lonely South Florida healthcare manager named Sophia Deming. At fifty-four, Sophia is miserable with work, regret, and failed ambitions. She leaves the reading, disappointed with Burns's forecast and worries that the way to an authentic life is a hopeless dream. From the shores of his cottage on Prince Edward Island, Burns channels Sophia for a period of two years and tells the story of her existential quest. Sophia's journey begins when she finds her dead mother's play, The Antiquity, in the family cottage in Peterborough, Ontario. Its main character, Russell Durnin, a biomedical scientist, finds the missing link to his research among the paranormal inhabitants of a futuristic prison. As an ambitious production of the performance develops in Toronto, Sophia encounters a series of misfortunes back home in Florida that mirror those of Durnin and that force her to confront her darkest fears. On opening night of the play, as her mother's portrait is unveiled upon the stage, Sophia discovers the secret of her emotional captivity.

I was given the chance to read this book and I am so grateful for the opportunity. Dead Mentors is such a well written story about Sophia and her mission to find her true self and her mother who was involved in a recital that she was not aware of. I liked how the author had used another person to tell the story of Sophia through John Burns by channeling her.

I also liked how Sophia & her sisters had survived all the obstacles they had to endure through their quest. And I also liked this passage in the book:

Man is fully responsible for his nature and his choices. 

Very well said. I cried on some parts of the book, but it was a feel-good cry. Hoping to read more of Sandra Nichols' masterpiece soon.