School teacher Angie Brock and Naval Captain Tyler Beckman were going to be married on Saturday after twenty-five years of being apart. Angie had a premonition of a Naval airplane exploding, but a storm and her subsequent fall overboard prevented her from warning Ty until he went to board the plane. He ignored her protestations, and true to Angie's vision, it exploded. But Angie saw Ty in her room and was confident that he would help her find him.

Under suspicion because of her warnings, she struggled with grief while being harassed by the investigator. Her only respite came when she dreamed of Ty, experiencing a mystical joining with him more complete than sex, and that too ended when he told her that he had to go.

Her son, Luke, had in the meantime become smitten with Melinda Chacon, a beautiful, success-obsessed Hispanic girl. When Angie met her she had a vision of her running away from Luke with something in her arms, but she didn't know what it meant. On their next meeting Melinda asked her some difficult questions, but Angie didn't know whether she was na•ve and curious, or cruel and insolent. Luke loved her, however, and he and Melinda decided to marry.

Still preoccupied with finding Ty, Angie went to see a regressionist, and remembered not just another life with Ty, but the place in between lives, and she recognised the lessons that she had already learned and those that she still had to.

When Melinda fell pregnant, Angie had a premonition and came to their house in time to talk her out of having an abortion. At baby Aaron's birth, Luke had a vision of his own.

Melinda returned to work and Angie cared for Aaron, until Melinda sent him to day-care and Angie was diagnosed with cancer. Luke and Melinda's marriage dissolved, and Luke moved back to care for Angie. She realised that she had neglected the living through obsessing over finding Ty, and that through death she would find him again.

ANGIE'S PROMISE is a well-written, complex story filled with well-developed, complex characters, and Toby Heathcotte describes the story and the characters with a strong voice. I teared up more than once while reading, and I enjoyed seeing the characters change and grow through the book.

I have to admit, though, that it was unnerving to read about a woman who shares my name but not much else. However, Melinda is a complex villain, which made it all the more tragic when she left Luke with Aaron, because one can understand why she felt that she had to.

Although not a believer in reincarnation myself, I feel that Ms Heathcote paints a beautiful picture of each life as an opportunity to learn from the last one and rectify the past, and brings new meaning to the term "soul mates" in a tender and enjoyable novel.

Reviewed By: Melinda Stanners
© July 2004