Stone Cottage – Maighread MacKay

Published in 2015 by Canadian author Maighread MacKay. Victoria Anne is waiting at the window, impatiently wishing for her husband’s arrival; because as soon as he comes home everything will be alright again. 

More than a hundred years later there’s Rebecca, a contemporary woman working at her father’s company. Struggling to prove herself by her own merits and build her place in the business.

Tragedy strikes Annie’s life and she’s hoping her husband can fix it, what she hasn’t realized though is that everybody has long gone, including herself. Unable to face what’s happened in her life she’s stuck in this plane, turning away from the light every time it appears before her. Thus she won’t move on until Rebecca comes to save her.

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Rebecca, on the other side, is reluctant to give credit to ghost stories. However, she changes her mind after her father’s passing, the eventful day got her falling into a swirl of deep distress. Now she will have to guide Annie to the place she belongs to in order to sort her own life out.

Since her father’s decease Rebecca has been enduring panic attacks, and while trying to keep them under control she comes across an old uninhabited property to which she feels strongly drawn to. Checking over the house she gets a glimpse of a female ghost watching through a window…

The story of these two parallel lives, one having the opportunity to fix the other constitutes the fascinating plot of the novel. Wouldn’t be wonderful to have the occasion to make amends with our past?

The book brings up the subject of reincarnation and states a hypothesis about what’s in there beyond death. Do we get the chance to plan our life before we come into this world? Can we review our earth experience after we’re done with this lifetime? I found this reflection rather educational and interesting. It actually makes a lot of sense to me, considering individuals come to life in a great variety of conditions. Providing that everybody had the chance to choose what they want or what they need to learn in this existence, all suffering and differences between human beings will become understandable and easier to accept from human comprehension. We could now talk about justice and it would surely dawn on us that disparities among us are originated by our own requests prior to this life, and we are not, in fact, just victims of random casualties.

Having the chance to reunite with our loved ones is a priceless gift I’d love to believe in; it would be marvelous to remain faithful that after somebody’s passing we will surely see them again in the future. I like to think that life continues after death and that we were already around even before we came to earth. I’m also keen with the idea that gender is a mere earthly condition, and that above all we have the same chances to grow and learn without gender prejudice constraints.

The book also shows the sever wounds caused by guilt or hatred and how these emotions can mislead a soul and get it caught timelessly, suspended and lost in limbo. How long will it need to come out of that state? According to the book it could require even longer than we dare to imagine.

I loved the positive outcome the author granted to her work. It fosters hope and a great sense of accomplishment for whenever we reach the end of this whole worldly existence. The tranquility which guarantees that, everything will come to a happy ending despite the hardship we have to endure in this journey and the time it may take; proves a great reason to enthusiastically continue climbing up our path.

Something I really appreciated was the fact that the book provides further information once the end is reached. That is, the reader gets to know how the events finally affected the characters’ lives and how they are dealing with a new reality. A lot of books omit this important piece and the future of the story is simply left up to the reader’s imagination.

No doubt this work is a great choice for those of us seeking for answers on what's there after death and what awaits us.