Title: Shyla's Initiative
Written by: Barbara Casey
ISBN: 1-890109-78-9
Price: $12.95


Shyla's Initiative, an occult romance by first-time adult novelist Barbara Casey, is a well crafted tale that entwines a forgotten, but primitive faith with a more modern tale of relationships and traditions, of pain and sorrow, and how life still goes on...with a new plan. A new initiative.


The novel is Casey's first attempt at writing adult fiction. She, has had several shorter pieces and poems published in Byline, American Poetry Review and other publications, but delivers this dynamic tale much in the same style of James Patterson in his Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas and Sam's Letters to Jennifer by breaking the novel down into different points of views; each from the various characters within the book, but with the main focus still being on and around Shyla Wishon, a novelist who, at best, is at the center of this much enchanted tale.


"The woman didn't seem to understand or care that she and Carl might want time for themselves. Shyla tried hard to surpress her feelings, because Pilar was Carl's mother..." Shyla believes. Yet there was something more than Pilar's unrelenting requests for her son to do things for her that troubles Shyla; there was the new computer he claimed was a gift from a co-worker, but when she confronted him with the sales receipt, he fessed up. Then, there were the documents left in her suitcase. They indicated that Carl named his estranged daughters as beneficiaries; But why; why hadn't he told her? What else was he keeping from her? Certainly, "...doubt had been raised, and no matter how hard she tried to block it out, the question kept resurfacing: Does he really love me?"


But that isn't the only thing brewing. Maria Fanjul, the last of the guardians, knows the end is near. "Maria was old; soon she would pass. According to the traditions of Regla of Ocha, it was time for her to give her knowledge and wisdom -- the heritence -- to another female related by blood...
"There were difficulties, however. Maria's daughter had been born with the grayness." So had her own granddaughter, and time was running out. She and her followers would again petition the gods in hopes of getting the reply they are praying for...in time.