The Rooms of Heaven

Book excerpt: A riveting memoir that explores the uncharted territory between passion and addiction, grief and madness, this world and the next. "A love story, a memoir, a haunting tale of grief and healing" —Chicago Tribune When Mary Allen falls in love with Jim Beaman, she doesn't know he has a drug problem, but she does sense demons and angels around him, like "a disturbance in the air, a sound just beyond the register of human hearing." And when Jim—discouraged and depressed, struggling with his addiction—kills himself a year into their relationship, Allen is unable to let him go. In her desperate attempts to recover from the loss, she uses a Ouija board and automatic writing to pull back from reality into the dark recesses of her mind, where she believes she can find him. The result is a mesmerizing trip across the boundaries between this world and the afterlife, a journey that leads her to the brink of insanity and ultimately back to herself.