The awakening

Described by the author as an "old-fashioned ghost story", The Awakening explores with chilling subtlety the theme of the uneasy dead seeking peace—a fear which must go back into our paleolithic subconsciousness. It's hoped that a few month's rest at the rundown farmhouse, Aaron's Rock, will help heal Ray Albright of the effects of a horrendous car accident: a badly broken back, terrible guilt at the death of his passengers, and the swift comprehension of how little separates the living from the dead. But the farm is not the expected idyllic refuge, for Ray's daytime sketching is disturbed by ghastly moans from a thicket close by, his sleep by sounds downstairs of a wounded man's crawling silenced by an explosion, and his peace of mind by visions of his absent wife in the arms of another man. And he is visited by a recurrent dream, each night a little longer and more real: a band of exhausted men in tattered gray uniforms comes forward in the dawn light, but then turns again wearily to face enemy fire. Only gradually, and with the help of a lovely and willing neighbor, does Ray come across the story of the Civil War tragedy which killed off the first owners of Aaron's Rock and whose ghosts are said to haunt the house. And only at the very end does he understand his own soul to be hostage to these ghostly players seeking release from torment.