AVIA……………………………………….wendy salter

HERSTORIA , a  novel by Wendy Salter,  has now been published and is for sale.

You can order a copy by sending me an email first, to wendy@wendysalter.com

The price is £7.99 plus £1.50 p&p.

Thank you to all those of you who have taken the time to visit and read the first excerpts posted here on the blog. The final version has evolved through a series of edits and additions and much proof-reading, and, after publishing the rough draft in November 2008 when I had that strange and wonderful experience of holding my own book for the first time, it is now ready for public exposure!

‘Herstoria’ – a life out of time – is a four-part story about Brieze, who loses first her mother at the age of three, then her father when she was fourteen. At twenty-eight she is heading for a crisis but then remembers that her grandmother had taught her how to travel outside of Earth time. By re-visiting the proverbial history books of time Brieze comes to realise that the connection she has with her loved ones, and ultimately with her soul, goes far beyond this one life-time. Not only does Brieze meet her spirit guardians in different characters, but she discovers where she has known the souls of her parents and her children before. She even meets her grandchildren before they are born in her present time. Other relationships reveal their deeper meanings, too. It shows her, in an unmistakable way, that she is part of a timeless relationship-family and her own earthly personalities are transient. It heals her loneliness and sense of loss by helping her understand that she is not really separated from her loved ones by death. Most importantly for Brieze at that time, she also comes to understand that she can be the vehicle for others to arrive into the Earth realm. It also helps her see that the relationships she engages in are more important than she realised and everyone around her is there to love her, and for her to love.

There are times in one’s life where an understanding of our Higher Condition can make all the difference, when making choices to follow our Soul’s purpose. Without that understanding we may get lost in negative aspects of our lower ego and lose our direction.This is not a new concept in the esoteric teachings of the world, which is to understand the karmic cycle of re-incarnation and its purpose in transcending the base animal life towards a higher conscious state.The pages of history hold unexpected clues to these mortal and spiritual relationships, for it is all in our evolution, where we have come from. What is yet to be written, the future, is no less difficult. All we have to do is let our experience, imagination and conscious choices take us there. Each of the stories present different ways in which Brieze discovers a past, or future, incarnation, which helps her to understand herself more. The experiences come at significant times of change in her life – motherhood, grand-motherhood, embarking on a career later in life and finally, at the time of contemplation of her mortality, at the end of her life.

Herstoria: A Life Out Of Time by Wendy Salter,

as reviewed by John Lehman, writer, poet and book reviewer from Wisconsin, USA.

In the final pages of her book, author Wendy Salter states, “To believe in the eternal spirit, therefore, we have then to embark on the eternal search for that place from whence we have come and to where we are going.” That’s exactly what Brieze the narrator/protagonist of this four-story novel does. Through each of these episodes in different places and different times she (and we) comes to realize a wonderful connectedness with loved ones past, present and future. I appreciated the overview of each part before “Story One” it helps the reader grasp the scope of the book and anticipate each of its different parts. My favorite was the contemporary encounter of the third section, but I also liked the first; my wife found the second most inspiring — Brieze travels back to spend time with Native American’s in the early 1600s.

But each of the four stories has an important underlying meaning: (the first) things have greater meaning than they initially appear to have; (the second story) nature is part of us and we regain ourselves by losing ourselves in it; (third) a partner in life helps us remember; (and fourth) the future —  who we will become —  shapes the present just as the past has. But the whole of this book is more than the sum of its parts.

There is a wonderful metaphor that runs throughout Herstoria. The first episode when Brieze slips into the otherworld is a bit like reading an old fashioned fairy tale of a child lost in the woods (“The oak trees here were grand old things, with bulging midriffs and knotted biceps and obscure faces in the bark that grimaced and leered.”) except this is a Jungian world of archetypes and the surprise interpretation, sprung on her husband at the end, is that she wants to have children. The metaphor is that life is like stories, like a book, in which we discover meaning. Here Brieze describes the architecture professor John Tate: “He would shed the dust of time that moved this old tome and make its presence known to her. And she could resist its invitation to take it off the shelf and sit down with it, in intimate union, no more than she could resist the turning of the Earth. She would lift its cover, slowly and carefully and watch it reveal its contents, as God may reveal His mysteries to the world.”

This book is well written. The transitions to different time periods are flawless and Salter’s grasp of historic detail gives each account real credibility. There is a temporary change of point of view in the first part developing the French revolutionary’s family more quickly, that is a little distracting and I found the second story more reflective with fewer scenes of character interaction that would have made it more dramatic. This is quickly rectified with the dynamics of the encounters between Brieze and the deaf man in the third story. The last section is a brief, (somewhat expository-heavy) glimpse into the crystal ball of the distant future. But what I enjoyed most about this book is that we, as readers, are acknowledged to be searchers. When the book is over and Brieze’s journey is complete, we are well on a trail of discovery about our own lives.

Ϫ Ϫ Ϫ Ϫ (4 angels out of four) – John Lehman