I Know Why We're Here: The True Story of an Ordinary Woman's Extraordinary Gift

English psychic Dolan's powerful autobiography reads like a novel, and will draw in both skeptics and believers. The author surveys her grim early life, which included abuse, stalking, bullying, an abortion and an unwed pregnancy that gave her a son, Shane, with a heart defect. After encounters with poltergeists and a premonition of a plane crash, she connects with a spirit guide named Eric. Meanwhile, her husband Andy, father of her daughter Tanya, becomes increasingly abusive while unable to work, and she begins a modest career as a professional medium. Good luck and bad luck alternate. She wins big win at bingo, but her marriage comes to an end. A new lover and a family of foster children are offset by the murders of Shane and her brother Pete in barroom brawls. One is moved by the consolation she finds in being able to communicate with Shane and Pete, but one also notices that she gives sensible, compassionate advice to a drug abuser, a cross-dresser and a pedophile. Whether the origins of her good sense and compassion lie in another world or in the author's rather rocky passage through this one, readers need not decide. But that sense and compassion do seem to have a lot to do with her admirable concept of""why we're here.""