The Fetch: A Supernatural Romance by Laura Whitcomb (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $17, 9780618891313/0618891315, 384 pp., ages 12-up, February 2009)
Whitcomb builds on the themes of her A Certain Slant of Light, but with even greater complexity in this novel about a fetch named Calder, whose job it is to take newly liberated souls from their death beds and escort them through the Death Door. "The Fetch holds the only Key." There is a supernatural romance here, too, but nothing as tantalizing as in her first novel. The story unspools as more of a mystery about the rules that govern the afterlife. As a fetch, Calder can be called to any place or time on earth; his duty is to stand detached at the scene as a body's spirit decides whether to live or die. If the spirit chooses death, the fetch escorts it along the Aisle of Unearthing. Calder, who died at age 19, has been a fetch for 330 years. But one day in 1904, he sees a reddish-golden-haired woman in a white gown tending a dying child and makes two faux pas: (1) he intervenes; he wishes for the child to live, for the woman's sake; (2) he falls in love with the woman in the white gown. Calder is summoned to this same circle of intimates three times, and on the third time, he breaks his Vows to occupy the body of a man who knows the woman in the white gown.
The intricacies of the afterlife would be complex enough for one novel, but Whitcomb then adds another layer: the man whose body Calder inhabits belongs to Grigori Rasputin--the enigmatic figure of history, sometimes called mystic, sometimes traitor--who was confidante to the last Tsarina of Russia (Alexandra, wife to Tsar Nicholas II) in the early 1900s. The woman in white is Alexandra herself. In horror, the fetch realizes, "He had broken his Vows for a fantasy." The author has some fun with the historic legends of Rasputin's many near-death experiences (Calder, being already dead, cannot die), but this subplot detracts from the compelling premise of the fetch's role and transgression, and the inner workings of the afterlife. Whitcomb imagines an Aisle of Unearthing with sites such as the Gallery (where one views one's mistakes in life), the Garden (in which one sees how one improved the world) and the Cell (where one frees oneself), each of which appears differently to the soul who views them. The author probes into spiritual themes without excluding anyone--instead of God, there is a Captain who ferries the souls from the Aisle of Unearthing across the Great River. Teens will appreciate most how Whitcomb ties the symbolism of the woman in the white gown back to Calder's own mortal childhood. If readers can stick with the plot's historical meanderings, they will find a rewarding ending.--Jennifer M. Brown