Reincarnation by Fire

When I was around twelve years old, I went to the tiny library in my hometown one day and checked out the book "Audrey Rose," by Frank De Felitta. I was into reading a lot of horror then, but most of it was by Stephen King. This book looked freaky. It had a girl on the cover, surrounded by flames, and her eyes seemed to stare at me beseechingly. (Look at it for yourself here on this Amazon page link.) The book was also turned into a movie.

I have to admit now that I probably did not entirely understand the themes in the book. The book is about a man who loses his wife and daughter in a fiery car crash. A psychic tells him that the soul of his daughter has been reincarnated into a girl named Ivy Templeton, and he seeks her out. Her family thinks he is crazy with grief, but the girl knows things that only Audrey knew, and she starts having flashbacks to the crash, &etc. So, in the end, he has to choose to let Ivy live or kill her in order to free Audrey's soul.

The story itself did not scare me as much as that artwork did. The book was a NYT best seller and sold over 2 million copies, according to the cover blurb. I cannot believe that my mom didn't try to keep me from reading it. I guess she thought I was old enough to handle the ideas in the story. I read the sequel as well: "For the Love of Audrey Rose," in which Ivy Templeton's mother Janice goes crazy with grief, seeking her daughter's reincarnated form. However, I didn't like that book as well as the original.

If you asked me to name specific books I read in my formative years, I would list about five: "Audrey Rose," "Gone with the Wind," "Winds of War," "Diary of Anne Frank," and "The Color Purple." No other books have stayed with me the way these have.