One Night Two Souls Went Walking

"A young chaplain at a large medical center fears her "soul is broken," though she hasn't subscribed to any formal religion in years-she's far too busy tending to the souls of her patients to do anything about her own. But strange things happen over the course of a single night shift, and interactions with patients in various states of consciousness and with various relationships to spirituality give her insight into her own life as they pinpoint our most human vulnerabilities and impulses. There's the former airport employee who never flew and, in his last moments of life, wants her to speak to him as if he's in a plane that's about to take off. The fifteen-year-old surfer who is the sole survivor of a rock-climbing accident and must now learn how to surf in his head. A frail elderly woman who has had a stroke and is unable to speak but does not want to be admitted. And the chaplain's companions: a student researching out-of-body experiences, and a dog that may or may not be a ghost. Though the novel unfolds over the course of a single night, Cooney renders the interior lives of the chaplain and her patients with great depth, evoking the challenges and rewards of solidarity in moments of fear and pain. A tender, intelligent novel that exudes wisdom and warmth and grants the most challenging moments of our human lives-those in which our bodies begin to fail us-a shimmer of magical possibility"--