In the sequel to “Ember,” Chico novelist-photographer and cemetery symbolism expert Doug Keister brings cemetery symbolism expert Jerry Jensen to the Père-Lachaise. He’s there with Ember Owens and Ember’s daughter (on the cusp of turning 21). Her name? “Phaedra” ($12.99 in paperback, independently published; also for Amazon Kindle).
Phaedra is there with her new sculptor friend Pierre, who in a short time is becoming more significant in her life. The trip is intended to be a healing time for Jerry, Ember and Phaedra after their trauma in the States, when a psychopath named Jason Lewis kidnaps both Phaedra and Ember. (Jason murdered his ex-wife Amber after she married Jerry. Complicated? Yes.)
Ember and Phaedra both escape, but there’s a fire and Jason is horribly burned. He’s still alive and in the new novel bent on recapturing his prey.
Yet, especially in the first half, sinister doings give way to Jerry’s guided tour of some of the key monuments in the cemetery (complete with dozens of Keister photographs). An extensive appendix after the novel ends expands on many of the monuments, including those of actress Sarah Bernhardt, composer Frédéric Chopin, writer Gertrude Stein and partner Alice B. Toklas, and mime Marcel Marceau. Keister also explores catacombs, a repository of skulls and bones, which play an important part in the novel’s action.
It's really inner action that is the focus, though, as Phaedra comes to terms with having been given up for adoption by Ember (who was raped as a teenager) and needing not only to understand why, but to find herself. Responding to Jerry’s stories, she keeps asking herself “What were the dead trying to tell her?”
Keister’s novel is a monument to monuments but also raises the question, as Phaedra’s life unfolds, “What are the living trying to tell us”?
Doug Keister is Nancy Wiegman’s guest on Nancy’s Bookshelf on Northstate Public Radio, mynspr.org, Wednesday, January 22 at 10:00 a.m., repeated Sunday, January 26 at 8:00 p.m.
