When you lose a loved one, whether it’s a close friend, favorite relation, or precious pet, you wonder where that special soul has gone and if you will ever see him or her again. For Dulcie Mills, Long Island computer programmer, the answer may lie between a virtual world and the real one, between the past and the present, between dreams and reality.
Unable to get over her fiancée’s death and facing the impending loss of her 15 year old cat, Dulcie escapes to a virtual world. When Dulcie's best friend accepts a job from a clairvoyant who offers predictions regarding Dulcie's dead fiancée and Dulcie becomes attracted to an online stranger, history begins to repeat itself in ways that are both promising yet terrifying. What Dulcie discovers through a virtual séance may mean the only chance she has left for love or death itself.
Cloudy Rainbow is told in five parts, one for each of the main characters, and spans 16 years in a non-linear sequence. Starting in Part One several months before the ending in Part Five, the plot then follows the main character through her college days to her mid-thirties, from her first true love experienced during the early years of the Internet up to the current explosion of virtual worlds and a tragic loss that she is given a unique chance to redeem. Addressing topics of reincarnation and soul transfer in similar ways as Greg Iles' "Sleep No More" and Nora Roberts' "Midnight Bayou," De Louise’s debut novel, Cloudy Rainbow, features an interesting mix of technology and the paranormal and will also appeal to cat lovers.
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