Roberta Llewellyn

Straight to the Heart Roberta Llewellyn

A mystical romance with contemporary socio/eco-political themes taking place in the Bay Area, Varanasi, India, and the Lost Coast region of Northern California.

Three disparate characters are karmically linked through a young woman who believes she is possessed by a spirit and has a mission to save the souls of dying children who are caught between spirit planes. Percy, an African-American Vietnam veteran, is a photographer, who becomes romantically involved with Sarah, a mature, passionate woman living in the Bay Area. Sarah's loopy housemate Maya, creates havoc with Sarah and Percy and eventually becomes instrumental in Percy having post-traumatic-stress flashbacks from his days in the military while serving in Vietnam.

The central themes of this novel concern children's suffering and pictures, not only the pictures shot by Percy of dying children in India and the funeral rites in Varanasi by the sacred Ganges River, but the pictures projected by each of us in our need to be seen. The story is evocative of how we each carry our burden of dreams and meld our dreams with present day reality.