'My Neighbors, Goodlife, Mississippi' by Eileen Saint Lauren
Sunday, January 12, 2025
Answering Life’s ‘Calling’ Compels Young Girl to Write About Her Supernatural Encounters
Saint Lauren's themes are delicately reinforced in brief but profound originality, such as the overarching theme that unites all of her books: “Without love, all becomes hell — even eternity.”
In Goodlife, Mississippi, sits a world without end where Mary “Myra” Boone lives and writes about the throwaways, the downtrodden and the lonely souls — some dead, some alive — that surround her. And in Eileen Saint Lauren's new book, My Neighbors, Goodlife, Mississippi, readers are invited inside Myra’s world, with a collection of 11 stories written by Myra herself, the main character in Saint Lauren’s debut novel, Goodlife, Mississippi.
In My Neighbors, Goodlife, Mississippi, Myra visits her neighbors and discovers a deeper meaning for life through the guiding truth found in the spirit world and learns early on that suffering can purify the soul. Each encounter involves a grotesque character or a horrific and bizarre act of revenge in the name of God and twisted love.
Myra’s neighbors, both Black and white, of the oppressive and often inhumane social climate of the 50s and 60s of Goodlife, Mississippi, knowingly and unknowingly seek retribution to exact some kind of justice for a severe injustice perpetrated upon them. Each story is too close to the truth of the era to be comfortable. Seen through the eyes of Myra Boone, they become life-shaping events.
Saint Lauren’s work often takes the reader to a supernatural place — holy and unholy — that provokes the question: Is this Heaven or Hell? Whatever the reader deems true will suffice because My Neighbors, Goodlife, Mississippi is a mixture of both.
My Neighbors, Goodlife, Mississippi: Stories
ISBN: 979-8-9861963-5-0
Available at www.amazon.com, www.barnesandnoble.com and all independent bookstores