Crossing the Meadow
By Kfir Luzzatto

    Touted as a "thinking man's horror story," this "Hitchcock-esque" story is a strange little novel where the dead walk unnoticed among the living, trying to take care of unfinished business before Crossing the Meadow.

   George thinks he is on a visit to the place of his birth and childhood. He has had a repetitive dream about a body being buried under a bathtub in his childhood home, and he wants to solve the mystery of that dream. Was it a dream?

   When he tries to call home, his daughter can't hear him, and he gets his first clue that all is not what it seems. He meets Clara Fini, who had been his father's mistress, and discovers that she has been dead for many years, and she tells him that he, too, is deceased. Clara is pretty sure that she is the one who is buried under the bathtub, and that George's father murdered her.

   George meets a group of people who are in that twilight zone between having died and Crossing the Meadow. They still have to finish tasks from their lives. The goal for everyone is to cross over, but they are unsure what awaits them on the other side.

   I found the plot to this story confusing...I just couldn't figure out where it was going. But, of course it all became clear at the end of the story. This story is classified as horror, but it's not really terrifying. The publicists call it "goodbye to gory horror." It is a fantasy with characters that are sympathetic and believable. You find yourself caring about what happens to them. This is a supernatural mystery to keep you reading far into the night. You may never look upon the prospect of death quite the same again.