Book Review

Talking With Angel is about a young girl confronted with a serious and life-threatening disease; her process of coping with hope, pain, decline, and despair; and ultimately the progression of her leukemia, ending with her transition into the Light. This is an amazing book, because Evelyn Elsaesser-Valarino has written this intimate story in the first person, from the "inside" of the girl, with all her thoughts and feelings. And this is why you become so intimately connected with her as she is confiding her innermost thoughts, and all her heart-rending emotions become your own emotions. While reading the book you become one with her, with her illness, with everything what happens around her and within her, including the realization that she will have no future like other boys and girls of her age. And by identifying yourself with this girl you become a part of her process of spiritual growth, a lesson for living and dying. During the progression of her illness she is comforted by her "inner communica tion" with her doll Angel, a gift from her deceased grandmother. Her doll Angel explains to her that death is not the end, but only a transition into another form of being. Ultimately, towards the end of her life in the ward for terminally ill children, she hears about the