What Happens When We Die

September 23, 2013
Personally comforting, if not scientifically rigorous, professional psychic Bodine's latest book returns to familiar subjects with a new focus. Following on the success of her earlier titles, like the popular Echoes of the Soul, Bodine shifts her emphasis to the dying process itself. She tells of sitting with many loved ones as they died, and how she communicated with their souls before and after their last embodied breaths. Bodine's frank, conversational style flows smoothly and is well suited to the art of the anecdote. The simplicity that makes her work welcoming to affirmed believers, however, also makes it unconvincing to skeptics. Bodine relays entertaining stories about communicating with celebrities' souls (Michael Jackson and Elvis Presley among them), for example, but offers little to explain how she accomplishes this. Some readers will be reassured by the idea that they can continue to interact with loved ones after death, but others will want more information about Bodine's methods. Slightly padded with excerpts from earlier books and lackluster lists (things to include in an end-of-life scrapbook, for instance), Bodine's latest entry in spiritual self-help expands only moderately on her earlier work.