4 out of 4 stars
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Have you thought about what life will be like once this one is over? Consider for a moment that, in a way, your life is perpetual. Never-ending. Envision your soul continuing to live on in some other form, another identity, a completely different reality. What if you lived before? What if your life right now is only “One of a Thousand Lives”?
K.L. Romo, in her gripping novel, Life Before, writes a captivating tale of a young mother who finds herself propelled into one of her many past lives. And it’s certainly not a life she would’ve chosen for herself if she had any say in it. Elaine Dearborn suddenly and without warning finds herself in a ruthless, gut-wrenching world where hate, abuse, and slavery persist during a time when oppression and captivity were supposed to have been outlawed. She is thrust back and forth between the pages of history and her current reality until she feels like sanity has officially evaded her. What I enjoyed most about this book was how, as a woman and a mother, I could relate to Elaine’s need for clarity and an explanation for what was happening to her. Though she doesn’t know why she is being thrown into the past, she learns from the experiences as her “former self” and uses that knowledge to write her future.
The author depicts many scenes where torture, rape, and even murder abound, which were difficult to read in some scenes, if I’m completely honest. Elaine- now Eliza- is able to escape the agonizing world of prostitution in the early 1900’s, but not without visible, unsightly scars, both physical and emotional. She meets many young girls in the same dreadful, luckless situation. She learns that some girls choose it out of necessity and often desperation- like thirteen-year-old Mamie Carroll who left her job in the spinning room at the local cotton mill after her boss forced her to perform sexual acts on him (she may as well get paid to do such things on repulsive men!); and others that were forced or maliciously tricked into it- like twelve-year-old Rosa Robles who was working in the fields with her half-white, half-Mexican family on their farm in south Texas when a man offered to take young Rosa to a “school for girls” in Dallas. Her parents couldn’t pass up the attractive proposal for their only daughter to receive a formal education and unsuspectingly handed Rosa over to the world of sex-slavery.
Romo daringly and candidly tackles the provocative themes of abortion and women’s issues, as well as racism, death, and drugs in her enthralling novel; but strength, bravery, heroism, and valour prevail as the characters battle against the hardships and misfortunes they are brazenly faced with. Each chapter begins with a heading that includes the name of the person narrating as well as the date so the reader can keep track of the timeline, which I found very helpful. The arrangement of the book is easy to understand and I only noticed a few grammatical errors throughout the 377 pages. For example, “than” was written as “that” on at least three different occasions. The only thing I would have liked better about this novel is if there was a short summary of the characters and a timeline at the beginning of the book so I could become familiar with the script and the plot beforehand. On the other hand, the chapter headings, and the fact that the chapters were fairly short, was very accommodating.
Overall, this book was greatly eye-opening, emotive, as well as empowering. I gave it 4 out of 4 stars because it is a novel that many people will enjoy, learn from, and feel stimulated and inspired by. This creative piece would appeal the most to adult men and women who are interested in early 19th century slavery and human trafficking. It is not a book for young children as there are many graphic sex-related scenes that include assault, rape, and torture. What makes this manuscript so moving is the quality of the tone, voice, dialogue, and character development that the author uses. The reader is taken into the time-warp that Elaine experiences and spit back out right along with her. It is an engaging tale of a “life lived before”, but is only “One of a Thousand Lives” where history is interconnected with the modern world in a tangible, evocative way.
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Life Before
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