Saving Elijah

Psychologist Dinah Galligan, securely married to her college sweetheart, Sam, is hurled into a waking nightmare when their youngest child, Elijah, falls into a life-threatening coma. Amid the technological marvels of the major medical center where this desperate mother is keeping vigil over her son, Dinah meets the mysterious Seth Lucien. A vain, outrageous spirit with a surprising connection to Dinah's troubled past, and a master seducer's awareness of her secret fears and regrets, Seth haunts the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit where Elijah dreamlessly sleeps. Claiming to know the future, he tempts Dinah with a simple deal: her son's life for the use of her body. What mother wouldn't willingly accept the trade? Fran Dorf, a spellbinding writer of psychological suspense, pilots this Faustian tale with total assurance. Laced with unexpected humor and passion, Saving Elijah is at its core the story of a mother's love for her son, set against a struggle with faith, big-time grief, and what it means to be human. "Stunning, spellbinding, crackling with suspense, dark humor, and provocative questions. With sharply emotional description and unerring domestic dialogue, Dorf has created a compelling page-turner that turns a family tragedy into a spellbinding novel of psychological suspense, and meditates, with honesty and insight, on the nature of parental love and responsibility." (Publisher's Weekly, starred review) "A moving testament to maternal grief. Delicately rendered and poignant." (Amazon.com) "Like the best ghost stories, Saving Elijah is chilling to read, yet it's impossible not to go on." (Wall Street Journal) "Fascinating. In the skillful hands of third-time author Dorf, this domestic drama is elevated to a fiercely compelling read." (Glamour Magazine)

Amazon.com Review

The clicks and beeps of cardiac monitors, the labored breathing of children struggling to survive--these are the sounds of a pediatric intensive care unit. They become the harsh counterpoint to the poignant melody of parental anguish that structures Fran Dorf's Saving Elijah. Dinah Rosenberg Galligan's 5-year-old son Elijah (whose young body is a cacophony of neurological glitches, learning disabilities, PDD, obsessive-compulsive disorder, a heart defect, and more) lies in a coma, and his parents must face the possibility of losing their beloved youngest child: And how would I survive if every molecule in my body had been corrupted? I'm not sure when the molecule thing happens, as you carry a child or simply as you mother him, but I was sure that each of my cell nuclei was unalterably made up of four parts, one part me, one part Kate, one part Alex, and one part Elijah. If a crucial Elijah-piece of each cell nucleus were suddenly sliced off at the cellular level, I was certain the missing piece of each cell would defile the whole structure until, eventually, it crumbled to dust. I could feel edges crumbling already. But then Dinah hears a mysteriously familiar melody: a version of the lullaby she has always sung to Elijah. When Dinah tracks it to its source, she sees a ghost. Playing the guitar and perching on a couch in the ICU waiting room, the ghost--that of the appropriately named Seth Lucien, Dinah's first lover--both taunts Dinah in her grief and invites her to rescue Elijah from the angel of death. The novel is essentially a reworking of the archetypal Faustian bargain: to what extent will Dinah go to save her son? Is the ghost a means of salvation or an instrument of torment? It leads Dinah both backward and forward in time: she must explore the failings of her past, and tread uncertainly the various futures that lie before her, some of them truly horrifying. It will come as no surprise to any parent--or to any reader of Goethe--that Dinah accepts the ghost's proposition: her son will live, but she must live with the ghost forever within her. Elijah's stunning recovery from the coma grants him an uncanny ability to understand and empathize with the pain of others. He alone comprehends his mother's sacrifice as the rest of Dinah's life begins to disintegrate. Dorf (Flight, A Reasonable Madness) has crafted a moving testament to maternal grief, which is at its most powerful when Dorf sets forth, in spare and eloquent prose, Dinah's fears, her anxieties, her crippling sense that she is to blame for Elijah's illness. But when Dorf dwells upon the metaphysics of the afterlife, or veers into lurid descriptions of the ghost's desire to "possess" Dinah, the writer's eloquence becomes turgid. Luckily, these moments are the exception. Saving Elijah is both delicately rendered and poignant. --Kelly Flynn

From Publishers Weekly

Taking a chance with a heart-wrenching subject--a dying child, and a mother's guilt and desperation--Dorf (Flight) has produced a stunning third novel that crackles with suspense, dark humor, and provocative questions. Dorf, who lost her own son six years ago, explores the depths of maternal desperation in psychologist Dinah Galligan, whose five-year-old, Elijah--born with cognitive and developmental difficulties as well as myriad physical ailments--is in a coma in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit. In the hospital corridor, Dinah encounters a wise-cracking, guitar-playing ghost, who, she realizes later, is the spectral remnant of her first lover, Seth Lucien. Dorf draws Seth with an irreverent pen: his bloody, dirty, phantasmal body has the stench of decomposition; his mouth is dirty as well, slinging insults, mocking Dinah and blaspheming against God. In the grip of Seth's pervasive presence--he appears at unexpected moments in her home, her office and in her dreams--and as a result of the hidden secrets he forces her to face, Dinah's life falls apart. Her practice folds; her teenage children, Alex and Kate, recoil in shock; and her exasperated husband temporarily flees. Dorf forcefully validates Dinah's choice, for--because of the Faustian bargain she makes with the demon--Elijah emerges from the coma; and not only that, he thrives, newly possessed of prophetic powers. Whether Seth is an actual presence or merely a product of Dinah's imagined fears and guilty conscience, she is forced to face her inner demons, real and imagined, finding redemption with the help of her angelic child, a sympathetic rabbi and her steadfast husband. With sharply emotional description and unerring domestic dialogue, Dorf has created a compelling page-turner that turns a family tragedy into a spellbinding novel of psychological suspense, and meditates, with honesty and insight, on the nature of parental love and responsibility. Agent, Joni Evans. Rights sold in Germany; film rights optioned by Sydney Pollack. (June) Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From The Washington Post

"With her skepticism and humor, Dinah is a deeply believable heroine. Dorf writes with headlong emotionalism and vivid detail."

About the Author

Fran Dorf is the author of A Reasonable Madness and Flight.

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