As Nuzum tells the story of his youth, he intersperses stories from 20 years later. Renewing an old acquaintance gives Eric the impetus to face his past, the reverberations of which remained in his fear of closed doors and his refusal to listen to or watch any ghost story whatsoever. What he decides to do is go ghost hunting, to find out once and for all if ghosts are real. He visits increasingly spooky places, including the battlefields of Gettysburg and the Mansfield Reformatory, the abandoned Ohio prison where some of The Shawshank Redemption was filmed. He has experiences that folks who believe in ghosts would say prove that they exist, but Eric is clearly not convinced.
Eric Nuzum is both a brave man and a good writer, bringing both warmth and humor to his difficult story. In taking on his relationships with both Little Girl and Laura, he provides a much-needed portrait of mental illness: one of a recovery. He stood on the brink but turned back. Today he is an award-winning writer and radio producer and has a wife and son. He is also scarred by his past, something he readily admits. His quest provided no neat and clean answers, which is another useful aspect of the book: a reminder that life is not necessarily understandable, but we can come to accept it.
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