Sime~Gen Inc. Presents

Recommended Books

December 2003

"The Trauma Trend"

Do me a personal favor and don’t buy this book during December. I see no reason to let merchandising experts think they are the drummers to whom we must march. You will be likely to find this series in your library, though, so stock up on holiday reading.

Since the tragedies of 9/11 we have seen a lot of fiction and nonfiction focusing on trauma and post-traumatic stress syndrome in all its guises.

We have done national mourning and remembrances, and come all the way through that to taking the necessary actions at home and on the world stage.

2003 can be summed up as a year of healing. I don’t think a year is going to be enough, but we’re making a start. Street Dreams is a mystery novel to read if you find your mind dwelling on replaying some trauma in your life. And if you don’t have that problem, fortify yourself with the wisdom to understand what trauma and most especially post-trauma are all about before you need to know.

"Street Dreams" are the nightmares cops suffer after a particularly traumatic incident. And this book, the 15^th I’ve reviewed in the Peter Decker, Rina Lazarus Mystery series, is about not the acquisition of such traumas, but about the healing of them.

For 13 novels we watched Peter Decker facing and overcoming major traumas, ugliness, heinous crimes, shock, fatigue, and combat style danger with pressure mounting in crisis after crisis within his family, and in his job, and among those he's trying to help.

Just when you thought nothing could shake him up anymore, came the novel Stone Kiss, which ends in a trauma that hits his unique personal, physical, psychological, emotional and spiritual levels each in a new way he's never faced before. And he acts, and has to live with the consequences.

While all that trauma was building in Peter’s life from book to book, Peter's eldest daughter, Cindy, by his first marriage became a cop and hit the streets for the nastiest part of her career. Her baptism of fire resulted in serious trauma all around, hitting Peter Decker perhaps even worse than his daughter.

Now in Street Dreams we are in the aftermath of trauma for both Cindy and Peter. Astrology shows us how life’s events ebb and flow. Vast, harrowing, climactic events are always followed by a quiet period such as this book depicts. Thematically, this novel is perfectly executed, which makes it a can't-put-it-down read. It is all about healing trauma on many levels.

In this Mystery Novel, Street Dreams, we have 3 major cases in progress.

A murder that occurred in Bavaria while Hitler was taking power. Rina Lazarus has acquired the case files on the murder of her grandmother and after translation, seeks Peter's help in interpreting. She wants to help her mother and family reach closure on that unsolved murder.

Then Peter's daughter Cindy finds a baby discarded in a trash bin, experiences a surge of motherly feelings, and can't let the case rest until she searches out the mother and the father who may or may not have been murdered.

In the process of dealing with the baby's problems and the traumas of the mother and her family, Cindy meets a man – Yaakov Kutiel, an Ethiopian Jew, and therefore eligible in a big way. She's never been married and is Jewish too, so since he's a Cohen, that makes her eligible in his eyes. Sparks blossom into raging fires during the rest of the investigations. Eventually it turns out he too carries major trauma scars.

And the third mystery, slams into both of them. During a date at an idyllic moment of peace, the two of them witness a hit-and-run where a woman is killed, and because of a crash caused by the hit-and-run, a baby dies. This event is a trauma they share, learning more about each other in 5 minutes than most people learn in 20 years.

But this adds twists and turns to Cindy's ideas of what the discarded-baby case is really about. She sees connections where her superiors see two separate cases. And the reader sees it her way.

Later, a car chases Cindy and her new boyfriend and someone shoots at them. Yet another trauma they share, and deal with. Is it connected – has Cindy dug too deep into mob related secrets?

All the while, Cindy is consulting her father, and seriously thinking about his advice even when she doesn't follow it. She's being mentored now in ways she would have rejected in her less mature days. But the two of them can't share the stories of their individual traumas.

"Time heals" is the oldest adage, and we see the practical application of it in this novel with some brilliant writing portraying a functional Jewish family's coping mechanisms to perfection.

Readers of mysteries will see what Cindy sees with her new cop eyes as she unravels all the threads of mystery and threat against her.

But all three cases turn out very differently than what the seasoned mystery reader would expect. It isn't a twist or a trick ending in any of these cases. It is the fulfillment of the title - the theme of the whole novel, and maybe of the entire series, brought to a level of wisdom seldom seen in any field.

One essential element in healing trauma is the gaining of perspective. Things look different from another perspective -- truth is still truth, but it means something else when viewed from another angle. This great wisdom is experienced by everyone in this novel but not preached at the reader. Some readers may actually miss it. This wisdom is demonstrated in the final resolution of each of the mysteries which also look very different when viewed from new perspectives.

In this series, we are living the cycling of life from the peak of trauma to the plateau of healing, the quiet space beyond the rapids. And we watch a great cop learning her trade at the hands of a master who has gained wisdom, learning not to twitch or flinch away from what is happening now because of what has happened before.

This whole novel takes place in that quiet space beyond the rapids of life. Readers expecting more explosive action replicating past novels will have to find a new perspective.

But the ending promises more action, tension, trauma, adventure, and mystery in the next volume where a gigantic new – even more orthodox but Sephardic– family becomes involved in the already complex family situation.

What has all this to do with the training of a Magician, which is what this column is all about?

As I have pointed out in this column any number of times, once you step out on the path of acquiring power, once you offer yourself for initiation – things happen. And those things are likely to be exceptionally traumatic.

Two things sustain you through such times. The most important is a stable and functional family, whether they be blood relatives or a chosen family. And the second is the wisdom that only maturity can bring – which doesn’t necessarily mean calendar age.

The key to shedding the "street dreams" – recurring dreams based on traumatic events, – is to have someone to talk to who can understand what you’re talking about and help you put it in perspective.

Many people suffer "holiday blues" because of a lingering after-effect of trauma – the loss of a loved one, having been fired from a job just at the holiday (a very common practice in corporations), and other such traumas.

If you are one of these, you should read the Peter Decker Rina Lazarus series with particular attention to the way they cope with trauma, then read Street Dreams with close attention to Yaakov Kutiel’s moods and his description of what sets them off.

One important key to getting over the holiday blues is identifying the trigger, backtracking it to the original incident, then gaining a new perspective on that incident.

Oh, of course it’s not that simple. Where layers of pain are involved, it will be a very complex process. The reading I recommend here is best used as a means of kicking back from the subject and just relaxing while your subconscious processes the work you’ve been doing.

One thing is for certain though. This process of defusing, digesting and assimilating trauma is absolutely essential to the study of any Occult science. You must get through it yourself so that your own buttons aren’t pushed by events you will face causing you to lose control of power. You must understand this process so you can help your clients through it using Tarot, Astrology or other counseling techniques. And ultimately, you will be called upon to teach it to your protégé so that someone will be prepared to inherit your power.

So study this series of novels of trauma and the ways trauma unresolved lingers and haunts the psyche. In these novels of Peter Decker and Rina Lazarus by Faye Kellerman you will find you have new insight into the experiences that leave ghosts, and perhaps a better ability to release such trapped souls.