In 1853, while he was writ­ing Les Mis­érables, nov­el­ist Vic­tor Hugo began par­tic­i­pat­ing in hun­dreds of séances to reestab­lish con­tact with his daugh­ter. In the process, he claimed to have com­muned with the likes of Pla­to, Galileo, Shake­speare, Dante, — and even the Dev­il him­self. Hugo’s tran­scrip­tions of these con­ver­sa­tions have all been pub­lished. Or so it was believed. Recov­er­ing from her own loss­es, mythol­o­gist Jac L’E­toile arrives on the Isle of Jer­sey — where Hugo con­duct­ed the séances — hop­ing to uncov­er a secret about the island’s Celtic roots. But the man who’s invit­ed her there, a trou­bled soul named Theo Gas­pard, has hopes she’ll help him dis­cov­er some­thing quite dif­fer­ent — Hugo’s lost con­ver­sa­tions with some­one called the Shad­ow of the Sep­ul­cher. What fol­lows is an intri­cate­ly plot­ted and atmos­pher­ic tale of sus­pense (based very much on Hugo’s own tran­scripts) with a spell­bind­ing ghost sto­ry at its heart, by one of Amer­i­ca’s most gift­ed and imag­i­na­tive nov­el­ists. My great grand­fa­ther was a Kab­bal­ist schol­ar — which is where my inter­est in rein­car­na­tion comes in — which the book deals with.