The Avid Book Collector: Virtual Book Tour & Giveaway ~ The Soul Retrieval by Ann W. Jarvie

THE SOUL RETRIEVAL

by Ann W. Jarvie

Inspired by a true story, The Soul Retrieval is a suspenseful tale of love, loss and healing which follows traumatized southern beauty Henrietta Clayborn as she moves between her home in a small South Carolina town and the New Mexico Native American reservation whose spontaneous healings keep drawing her physician husband back. Tortured by her awful secrets, Henrietta struggles to thrive in either locale, but it is her unlikely friendship with Joe Loco––an eccentric Native American mystic with an Elvis fetish and a gift for healing––that shows her the way to be whole again.

Set in the late 1950s, The Soul Retrieval is richly woven with spiritual insights but also deadly secrets, forbidden healings, a murder mystery, stunning scenery and an unforgettable cast of characters.

A story of transcendent and inspiring power that is both entertaining and enlightening, readers will be cheering for the uptight woman from South Carolina to push through her fears of the forbidden as she searches for truth and healing, faces great obstacles on the frontier of self and ultimately becomes more than she ever thought possible.

After finishing the second nocturne, he looked up at her. “You know that I’ve been researching the high incidence of spontaneous healings here, right?” Jeff was both a lead physician and medical researcher at the Medichero Indian Hospital. He reached for a pack of cigarettes from the pocket of his short-sleeved white shirt.

“Uh-huh,” Henrietta said. She barely heard what he said. How am I going to get into it? How am I going to tell him? She had asked herself these questions at least a million times. She picked up a pen and notebook from the coffee table, trying to keep her hands busy.

Jeff smoked in silence a moment before continuing. “There’s more to it than even I imagined.”

“More to what?” she asked. She absently doodled on the page without looking up. How am I going to tell him?

Jeff blew smoke. “The spontaneous healings that I’m so interested in ... the medicine men here seem to be doing something real to affect the recoveries.”

Now he had her attention. “They are?” She looked at him. “Like what?”

Instead of answering, Jeff got up and turned toward the bay windows that cradled the piano in a small alcove off the living room of the doctor’s cottage. His silhouette against the bright morning light was a man-shaped eclipse, his muscled edges luminous and blurred by the smoldering tobacco. It gave him an unworldly appearance, and Henrietta was reminded about how often she felt like an outsider here, and even back home.

Ann W. Jarvie has a B.A. in journalism and more than twenty-five years’ experience as an award-winning writer in advertising and public relations agencies, both in South Carolina and Chicago. She now lives near Phoenix, Arizona, where she spends part of her time as a freelance copywriter and the rest writing fiction.

The Soul Retrieval was inspired by Jarvie’s maternal grandmother’s fascinating life on Indian reservations, where she lived with her physician husband until his mysterious and untimely death.