Taking a legend, with a basic definition of what the Boo Hag monster does, Mary Lynn Plaisance provides readers with a short, mystifying mystery surrounding the lives of two young girls who lived alone in Louisiana, after their father left, their mother died, and then, ultimately, their grandmother who had been taking care of them. Celee was 14 when she began to take care of Tootsie who was 4 at the time...
Celee always brought flowers, holy water, and three candles from her church to the healing dome. Magnolias, mums, or whatever flowers were in bloom, she placed in between each candle for ambience. Her mama always told her that the glowing light of a candle would shine up to Heaven, and the Lord could hear her words from the smoke of the flames. Celee felt comfort from those words. She loved burning candles. She stared into the flames and prayed that everything would be peaceful for everyone in the world. Celee loved peace.
While waiting for the lady to come in her boat, she kept fiddling with the flowers, making sure they looked nice...
At 6:00 pm, in the distance she heard a motor boat approaching the healing dome, it was them.
"Welcome to the healing dome. Welcome."
The lady was clearly amazed at the place. The man looked a little skeptical. The young man looked hopeful...
"The iron dome is beautiful. Hi, I'm Elizabeth. This is my husband John. And...this is our son Stephen. He has crippling arthritis. It came to him in one year when he was only 18 and he was crippled like this ever since then. He's only 20, and we prayed so much that you can help him."
"I can help him," she assured Elizabeth...
~~~
When Ceelie was a young girl, she had healed a frog while at the Healing Dome. Her mother and grandmother explained that she had been blessed and she had been healing since then. Now at the age of 24, with her birthday the same as Tootsie, who would be 14, she had received a request to help a young man who had crippling arthritis. After Ceelie had healed him, his father, who owned a newspaper, wanted to do a story of what he had done. Ceelie quickly asked him not to--she knew that people would come from far and wide for her to heal them and she had been feeling tired, unable to breathe easily.
The newspaper owner betrayed her and published the story!
Soon the trouble started, including strangers in town who Ceelie noticed was watching her and many gathered at her home asking for her healing power... It was during this time that Tootsie seem to come to resent her for getting so much recognition. She knew, from her mother, that she had also been blessed, but nobody else had ever been told. So whenever Ceelie went to heal at the Dome, Tootsie went out on her own, and had even met a man...
Plaisance has a real gift in writing about the paranormal and creating southern gothic that pulls readers in. The dialogue is relatively simple as, in many ways, Ceelie still thinks of Tootsie as a child. And much of the story of their lives are shares by Tootsie asking Ceelie to tell her stories about their early life...With their birthdays coming, Tootsie has asked for a hi-fi and Ceelie was able to make a good deal with Trader Paw, a 80-year-old shop keeper and friend. She was able to also buy 4 records.
Tootsie used her talent to make them a rainbow-colored cake and Ceelie loaded the player... Baby Love, Tootsie's favorite came on and they danced around while the other songs came on... But readers will pick up on questionable statements and start wondering just what is going on. So that, for instance, while they are dancing at the birthday party, a strange record is added, that Ceelie didn't buy... Tootsie had first said that Joe gave it to her...but who was Joe?
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| http://www.theparanormalguide.com/blog/boo-hag |
Interesting for me was that Ceelie had begun to doubt her own blessing and attributed the miracles to The Healing Dome... only to have it totally destroyed as Ceelie tried for a miracle there... Can some people heal, or are inanimate things able to acquire healing power through some cosmic energy surge...In this book which I easily read in a day, there is much to ponder and, if you have an interest in the paranormal, you'll especially enjoy separating out the real paranormal gifts that an individual has been given from the legends that are built up through folk lore... Because, surely, some of the book includes the fantasy from the author's creative mind, right?
Surely there are no such things as boo hags... Surely not!
Nobody has seen the two characters in this film since it stopped...mid story...
When you read novels by Mary Lynn Plaisance, expect to be caught up in suspense, the paranormal, a mystery, or just a little fantasy, but don't think you'll be able to predict what you'll be reading... Check out my review of The Ghost of Mavis for something entirely different from this spooky tale!
This book is thought-provoking, easily takes you into the setting of two young Black girls living on their own, growing up and learning what they can from each other and their neighbors... I enjoyed it greatly, even if it took me quite a while to go to sleep after finishing...
GABixlerReviews
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