WITNESS TO THE WORLD BEYOND

Former academic and nurse researcher Mawn presents a biography of professional medium Kevin V. Coan.

In her nonfiction debut, the author chronicles the life story of a man who, she says, “has provided a sense of peace and closure for those who have lost loved ones” for a quarter-century. She’s based her book on a series of in-depth interviews with Coan, with people who’ve known him personally, and with people for whom he’s done readings (the author herself has observed nearly 100 of them). Mawn asserts that Coan has contact with “Spirits” that started contacting him when he was a small boy growing up in Massachusetts. As an adult, he took a job with Amtrak, and stayed with the company for nearly two decades until 1999.While he was pursuing his career, he was also attending a Spiritualist church in Salem. The two elements of his life intersect frequently; at one point, for interest, he says that he saw “three Spirits” at the foot of his bed at a Washington, D.C. hotel during an overnight trip, but “he didn’t tell a soul about this vision.” He met other mediums through Spiritualist churches on Massachusetts’ North Shore and started, in the early 2000s, doing home readings for a steadily expanding list of clients. Over the course of this biography, Mawn writes with a tone of warmth and sympathy, which is involving right from the start. However, her prose style tends toward clichéd phrases that become increasingly noticeable and distracting, such as “a blessing but also a curse,” “the beginning of the end,” and “nip…in the bud,” which all appear on a single page. The author champions Coan’s resistance to people in medium circles who are “just making stuff up,” and she’s an engaging believer in Spiritualism who clearly intends this book for those who share her beliefs.

An earnest and warm portrait that will appeal to the author’s fellow Spiritualists.