The Woman Who Lost Her Soul

The themes this author tackles go right to the heart of identity and destiny. "We choose the lies in which we participate and in choosing, define ourselves and our actions for a very long time," he writes at one point. In other passage, we are first introduced to Steven with these words: {Steven would be} "introduced in the most indelible fashion to his destiny, the spiritual map that guides each person finally to the door of the cage that contains his soul, and in his hand a key that will turn the lock, or the wrong key, or no key at all."

The questions he asks are universal: how do you change back if your former self no longer interlocks cleanly with the shape you have assumed? What happens when you become an actor in a theater without walls or boundaries or audiences? Where is the thin wall of separation between "patriotism and hatred, love and violence, ideology and facts, judgment and passion, intellect and emotion, duty and zealotry, hope and certainty, confidence and hubris, power and fury..." And when do we have the right to challenge and to reclaim our own souls before it's too late?

This is an amazing book, a true magnus opum, a story of who we are and how we came to be that way. Yet at its epicenter, Dottie and the two men who love her - her unhealthy father and the book's moral core, Green Beret Evelle Burnette - in their own way battle for her very soul.