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.
ABOUT THE BOOK
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.
AN EXCERPT
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.
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