cover image Love Beyond Life: Healing Power of After-Death Communication, the

Love Beyond Life: Healing Power of After-Death Communication, the

Joel Martin. HarperCollins, $23 (288pp) ISBN 978-0-06-017498-9

After three books (We Don't Die; We Are Not Forgotten; Our Children Forever) that dealt with psychic George Anderson's alleged communications from the ""Other Side,"" Martin and Romanowski team up again, this time to recount the inspiring results of their study of more than 500 interviews with people said to have experienced direct contact with a deceased loved one. The authors also studied the available literature on the subject, including 3,000 case studies, 100 of which they detail here. Martin, who claims to have ""personally witnessed"" more than 11,000 psychic readings, believes that all of us, ""at least theoretically,"" should be able to communicate with departed loved ones. Instances of dreams, apparitions, deathbed visions, near-death experiences, synchronistic occurrences, clairvoyance and psychokinesis are discussed. The authors include testimonials from the celebrated-Bishop James A. Pike, following the suicide of his son; Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross; Raymond Moody Jr., for instance-but their text offers primarily a methodical examination of the personal experiences of ordinary individuals and their often brief encounters with a recently departed loved one. Well-written, with clear definitions of paranormal terms, the book provides a cogent round-up of current afterlife communication theories as well. And for the more tremulous among us, there is the authors' assurance that after-death communications are rarely evil, random or initiated by strangers. (Mar.)