The 31 Near Death Experiences of Jenny Black

“Can two old friends figure out what NDEs mean before Jenny Black gets trapped on the wrong side of death for good? An immersive novel of friendship and transcendent phenomena. Lively prose that toggles between humor and urgency, the book as a whole serves as a rumination on the nature of life, birth, and death. It’s an engaging, enjoyable story of attempting to find the right balance—at least while on this side of the grave.” Kirkus Reviews

Why does Jenny Black keep having near death experiences?

Some people, those lucky enough to return from a brush with death, report strange things. A life review, an out-of-body flight through a tunnel filled with a golden light, long-dead relatives and friends waiting in loving welcome, dissolving into an ecstatic oneness with the universe.

It’s a classic near death experience. Not everyone who comes back from the brink has one, but those who do say their lives are changed forever. And nobody has ever had more than one. Until now. And they just keep coming.

Jenny Black has had twenty-two in the last year alone, spontaneously and without almost-dying. They just happen. One second she’s hanging out, maybe by the pool or watching television, and the next she’s soaring through a tunnel and connecting with dead relatives.

At first Jenny thinks it’s pretty cool. She’s a lifelong seeker and maybe this is the payoff, a universal secret about life-after-death being revealed to her. But no one believes Jenny. Now she’s having trouble coming back from the tunnel, losing a little more of her ‘self’ every time.

Jenny’s childhood best friend Loretta works at a university as its public relations director. Loretta has troubles of her own—a husband battling cancer and a midlife crisis that feels like a zombie infection. Still, when Jenny shows up out of the blue after five years begging for help, Loretta puts her own life aside and sets out on a quest to understand the science, neurology, philosophy, religious underpinnings and history of near death experiences, interviewing a cast of quirky academic experts in each relevant department who, it turns out, don’t agree on much.

Still, Loretta begins to weave together the disparate information, and as she does, realizes that near death experiences may be a clue to an entirely new story about what it means to be human, with the potential to upend a century of scientific and philosophical thought about the sense of ‘self.’

But when a public relations crisis sweeps across the university, Loretta’s quest is disrupted. As she tries to contain the damage, Jenny’s life hangs in the balance and there may be no coming back from her next death. Can Loretta solve the mystery of near death experiences before Jenny gets trapped on the other side?