"Paki Wright's heroine is like a Western 'delog' - in Tibetan, a person who has crossed the threshold of death and returned to tell about it. The All Souls' Waiting Room recounts, with hilarity and drama, 'a youthful attempt to jump off the Infernal Wheel' . . . Wright's themes of karma and reincarnation show how life's mysteries have to be experienced, not prematurely rejected."

- Martha Glessing, author, Wind Cloud

 

 

"Don't let the uproarious humor fool you.  This book is laced with penetrating social commentary . . . a wonderful piece of writing!"

- Michael Nagler, American Book Award-winner, "Is There No Other Way?  The Search for a Non-violent Future"

"Accomplishing a feat very difficult for authors - and highly rewarding for readers - Paki Wright has written a novel that is at once an audacious send-up and a terribly serious tale. Created with unrelenting skill and unflinching memory, The All Souls' Waiting Room is a place of harsh realities and transcendent possibilities. If you go there, you'll find a vibrant novel waiting for you."

- Norman Solomon, nationally-syndicated columnist and Author of The Habits of a Highly Deceptive Media, Target Iraq

 

     Paki's work has been published in books, newspapers, and         magazines, including The New York Times Book Review.

See Preview Below
     A hapless eighteen year-old girl named Johnnine Hapgood, raised by hard-drinking, free-loving followers of the psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich during the nineteen-fifties of McCarthy-era America, tries to commit suicide.  Johnnine's subsequent out-of-body experience takes her from New York's Greenwich Village, where she grew up, to the infinitely vast All Souls’ Waiting Room, where all souls go for re-routing in between lives.  Is she actually dead yet?

     In the All Souls' Waiting Room, Johnnine meets Xofia, the ageless ethereal essence of feminine wisdom banished from Earth for the last five thousand years, as well as the shades of Wilhelm (Willie) Reich, Sigmund (Shlomo) Freud, and Carl (Gussie) Jung.

    Before the male and female Powers-That-Be can decide if Johnnine will be granted a ticket for a "p.d.," or premature departure, she must watch her Life Review film.  (In Buddhism, we are encouraged to view our lives as dreams or movies.)

     The action unfolds on two different, highly contrasting planes: that of the cinema verite version of Johnnine’s tumultuous young life, caught up in an ideological struggle between deadly serious extremists of the far right and the far left; the absurd All Souls’ antics of operatic cherubs, competitive (and still analytical) dead psychoanalysts; and the alluring, enigmatic Xofia, who has a voice like Tallulah Bankhead's and a figure like Marlene Dietrich's.    

    Xofia's warm, biting humor is a good match for Johnnine’s mordant, sarcastic wit as she attempts to convince the demoralized young woman that "even though Earth is a rough and dirty sandbox, it’s the only sandbox we have."

     Revelations are in store for all visitors, returning or non-returning, to the All Souls’ Waiting Room.
The Complete Novel
“The All Souls’ Waiting Room”
by Paki S. Wright
is available at www.barnesandnoble.com enter Paki S. Wright and/or the title