The Girl Who Came Back to Life
by Craig Staufenberg
Book Genre: Middle Grade
Publisher: Self Published
Release Date: April 16th, 2014
Book Description:
When you die, your spirit wakes in the north, in the City of the Dead. There, you wander the cold until one of your living loved ones finds you, says "Goodbye," and Sends you to the next world.
After her parents die, 12-year-old Sophie refuses to release their spirits. Instead, she resolves to travel to the City of the Dead to bring her mother and father's spirits back home with her.
Taking the long pilgrimage north with her gruff & distant grandmother-by train, by foot, by boat; over ruined mountains and plains and oceans-Sophie struggles to return what death stole from her. Yet the journey offers her many hard, unexpected lessons-what to hold on to, when to let go, and who she must truly bring back to life.
Excerpt:
CHAPTER 8
HER HEART
Sophie had no notion how to craft a loaf of bread and didn't earn any
money during her first morning at the bakery. She returned the next
day, then the next and the next, all without producing a single loaf.
Rather than quit, she kept returning, pressing forward and placing herself
under the baker's patient instruction.
The baker showed Sophie how to handle the earthen oven and moved
her around the back of the shop with a calm, confident sense of care. When
Sophie made a mistake the woman responded with a firm, though surprisingly
intimate, correction, and Sophie did her best to listen and follow the woman's
commands. Yet, despite closely following these instructions, Sophie's bread
wouldn't respond to her touch, and refused to rise, and no matter how
precisely she placed her dough within the oven, her loaves left its fires cold
and undercooked.
The baker saw this and explained how baking was more than a technical
exercise. She explained how love lay at the heart of good bread, how she had
to pull the warmth from deep in her heart and let it flow it into her hands until
her fingertips tingled and the dough abandoned its toughness and responded
to even the lightest touch. The baker explained how the heat of the oven gave
the dough a hard crust to protect the bread, to make sure the love pressed
into the loaf only showed itself to the world when shared freely at the table.
These words of love fell on deaf ears. Sophie had grown up burying any
stirrings of emotion she may have felt within her chest, doing her best to remain calm, to maintain the steadiness her parents silently demanded. Though she
quickly mastered the technical skills of baking, during her first mornings in the
baker's kitchen, Sophie couldn't locate any sort of warmth within her heart.
With every morning that Sophie approached the floured marble table
without producing a remotely respectable loaf, the more she worried she would
never master this seemingly simple art well enough to receive even a single
day's wages, let alone enough money to travel north with her grandmother.
Every morning she searched her heart more deeply, but love hid itself from
Sophie. Instead, a different feeling rose in her chest. Desperation.
Every morning, as Sophie walked to the bakery, the sun rose a little earlier
and the winter wind bit a little more softly than the last, and as spring began to
wake the world, Sophie approached the bakery's back door with greater panic.
Without any other feeling to work with, Sophie dove into this fear, day after
day, until, to her surprise, her dough began to rise a little, and her loaves began
to leave the oven cooked a bit more than they had the day before.
Encouraged by these small victories, Sophie dove deeper and deeper into
the dry heat of the bakery's early hours. No matter how frighteningly deep
she sunk into her heart, Sophie found herself feeling safe within the baker's
welcome and protected care. Soon, she cracked through deep enough to find
other feelings within her heart, lining the corners of her fear. These feelings
began to excite her. They brought a tingling to her chest, and then to her neck,
and finally to her cheeks.
Slowly, during those days kneading the dough on the floured marble table
standing beside the bakery's earthen oven, the measured ice around Sophie's
heart began to melt. The warmth within her heart started to spread throughout
her whole body, until the tingling filled even her hands and, without an ounce
of effort on her part, shot through her fingers into the dough.
Sophie's once dormant dough began to rise, and then to bake golden, until
it tasted nearly as earthy and grounded and rich as the baker's own. Soon
enough, Sophie began to walk home with wages in her hand at the end of
each of those mornings when the frost gave way to dew.
My Review:
I received a free copy of the book from the author for my honest opinion.
After 12 year old Sophie's parents die she is sent to live with her grandmother. Sophie has not seen her grandmother in a very long time so in a way she is a stranger to her. With losing her parents Sophie is sad and quiet and mopes around a lot. Sophie and her grandmother hardly ever say two words to each other. Sophie is kind of afraid to talk to her grandmother she is scared that she will be mean to her. But Sophie soon figures out that grandmother doesn't really care very much what she does. But she soon learns that her grandmother is grieving as well. She lost the love of her life very recently, Sophie's grandfather.
In Sophie's world when someone dies they go to the City of the Dead. They stay there wondering around like they are lost until someone that is still alive and a loved one goes to the City of the Dead to tell them "Goodbye". The City of the Dead is far, far, far away up North where it so very, very cold. Sophie finds out that her grandmother is planning on going to the City of the Dead in the spring when it is starting to warm up and traveling will be easier. Her grandmother tells her she can go with her but she will not pay her way. She will have to earn the money herself that she will need for the trip.
So Sophie goes into town looking for a job but no one wants to hire a little girl. Sophie is very determined little girl and doesn't give up easily. She finally gets a job in a bakery make bread. When she is not making bread she is straightening up the bread out on the counters. Sophie is a very hard worker besides her job sort of helps to keep her mind off of her parents somewhat. Sophie works all through the winter months and finally everything starts to thaw out.
Sophie is real happy when it is time for her and her grandmother to leave on their trip to the City of the Dead. Sophie meets a lot of different people on her journey north and she also makes a few friends along the way. Sophie has some good times and some bad times on her trip.
I really enjoyed going along with Sophie on her trip North to the City of the Dead so she could tell her mom and dad goodbye so they could go on to the next world. Sophie is smart, stubborn and very independent little girl who at times went down the wrong roads but so does a lot of other people when they are hurting as much as she is. She traveled down some rough roads and there were times when I wasn't sure if she was going to make it or not but she always came out on top. She learned a lot of tough lessons for someone so young and it made her grow up way faster than a lot of other children her age.
The Girl Who Came Back to Life tells a story of what a little girl goes through after losing her parents in death. It tells of the grief and the pain that she felt and how she dealt with knowing that she would never see them again. It tells of the long dark road that she went down to deal with their death and of the road that she traveled on so that she could find a new life for herself without them in it. The Girl Who Came Back to Life is a story that will grab a hold of you right from the first word and it will keep holding on to you long after you have read the last word.
Craig Staufenberg is a writer and filmmaker living in NYC.
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