The Angel in My Pocket: A Story of Love, Loss, and Life After Death

by Sukey Forbes

A grieving mother draws on her storied heritage to find her daughter in the afterlife
 
When Sukey Forbes lost her six-year-old daughter, Charlotte, to a rare genetic disorder, her life felt as if it were shattered forever. Descended from two distinguished New England families, Forbes was raised in a rarefied—if eccentric—life of privilege. Yet, Forbes’s family history is also rich with spiritual seekers, including her great-great-great-grandfather Ralph Waldo Emerson. On the family’s private island enclave off Cape Cod, apparitions have always been as common as the servants who once walked the back halls. But the “afterlife” took on new meaning once Forbes dipped into the world of clairvoyants to reconnect with Charlotte.
 
With a mission to help others by sharing her own story, Forbes chronicles a world of ghosts that reawakens us to a lost American spiritual tradition. The Angel in My Pocket is a moving and utterly unique tale of one mother’s undying love for her child.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Grief, Death, Audiobook, Spirituality, Biography

256 pages, Hardcover

First published July 3, 2014

About the author

Sukey Forbes is the founder and president of an art, antiques, and interior design company and a blogger for The Huffington Post. The Angel in My Pocket is her first book. She lives with her family In Boston and San Francisco

Reviews

[Heidi Öste · Rating 5 out of 5]

You should read this book if you have ever lost a loved one or have someone close to you who has. It will open your heart and your mind to the many ways of grieving, living with loss and surviving through life's challenges.

Readers will take away a sense that life is unexpected and beautiful in both that which we understand, and that which we will never fully comprehend. There are gifts in all of life's lessons, and sometimes the most painful of all lessons provide the most precious gifts.

[Rachel Defrank · Rating 2 out of 5]

I received an ARC copy of this book from the first read giveaways. I was excited about it in the beginning, and started to connect with Charlotte and a little with Sukey, but it didn't progress very far. I felt kind of "ehhhh" about the book. I feel like it kind of dragged on. The facts were kind of interesting, but never really caught my interest. I feel like, honestly, this book was very important for Sukey to write. It somewhat read as a cathartic diary kind of novel. She needed to write the book as part of her healing, and I understand and appreciate it, however, I feel like that's why a lot of people aren't connecting with the book. I feel like I know Sukey personally now, and I honestly hope for her life to continue on a happy, healthy path, but I wasn't overall very impressed with the book.

[Stephen Gallup · Rating 3 out of 5]

Offhand, I think a memoir that starts off sounding like a novel is off to a good start. So I thought the opening of The Angel in My Pocket was promising:

Just across the meadow from Mansion House on Naushon Island, there's a barn devoted entirely to genealogy. ...

I had selected the book both because I have a special interest in memoirs, having read scores of them since the emergence a few decades ago of this new genre, and because I care in particular about families with kids who are disabled or who die. (I had such a kid—a terribly disabled boy. My own memoir was published ten years ago. Later, he died.)

Anyway, so I have formed ideas about what a memoir needs to do, to be effective, and (not wanting to compete in this arena) I am all too well acquainted with loss. My son's mother also died rather young.

Just a few pages in, I began having doubts about this one.

Sukey Forbes is telling us all about her family tree. I rather like the way she uses it to introduce the fact that Charlotte, her middle child, is deceased. She pauses then to reminisce rather poetically about Charlotte ("a girl's girl who loved to twirl and dance in fabulous fabrics"—read that aloud). Next, she zooms out to a wider-angle picture and describes where and how they live.

Words like prosperity, security, good fortune, and even the dreaded one—privilege—come to mind. The author seems to be more aware of this than is Joan Didion in a similar memoir, The Year of Magical Thinking . There are moments when she sounds almost apologetic. They had a very, very, very good life. Even in tragedy, they had an enormous supportive family that converged literally overnight from all corners of the globe. She still has a good life. I for one do not hold that against her. But in giving it so much attention, she prompts questions as to the focus of her book.

If you want to read a mother's heartfelt memoir about loss of a child, I recommend This Lovely Life, by Vicki Forman. Or for a father's perspective try Alex: The Life of a Child, by Frank Deford (but keep the Kleenex on hand).

This one is something different. That, I think, is why so many readers complain about it. They're confused by the direction the narrative takes, and I'll confess to becoming impatient with it too—to the point of occasionally skimming.

There are two gripping, dramatic scenes, both concerning Charlotte's attacks of malignant hyperthermia. Those are rendered masterfully, devastatingly. The rest of the book represents the author's effort to make sense of what happened, and to put her own mind at rest regarding Charlotte's present whereabouts.

Sukey Forbes does tell us a lot about the emotions she experienced, sometimes as "a catatonic stoic," sometimes "a shrieking hysteric," mostly "trying to cope, trying to hold your head high and keep bootstrapping along despite indescribable pain." There is no shortage of that. But by thoroughly situating her daughter in an august family line, among "long-dead ancestors [whose faces] are preserved in a series of plaster 'death masks,'" she must be trying to claim a kind of immortality for her. Then there is the stuff that begins when her husband sees a hawk perched in a tree and says, "That's my sign that Charlotte is okay." Sukey then sees a doe and a fawn crossing their property and takes that too as "a sign." Later they see a shark, and for some reason "there wasn't the slightest doubt—Charlotte was sending me a message."

She says, "I needed a new perspective that would unite my ordinary perspective with the new state of being that Charlotte had entered." So she seeks counseling from psychics and mystics in search of the answer to "Where was my daughter?" because "I had to know that she wasn't totally gone. And that if she was gone I had to find some level of comfort with what her new address was."

Hey, if you want a memoir about unexplained metaphysical phenomena, you might like Walking Through Walls .

In the context of this book, at least, Sukey Forbes achieves a degree of peace. It's fortified by the advice that her purpose in life is now to be "making other people comfortable with the kind of loss I'd suffered."

I am not at all comfortable with what happened to my son, and I'm thinking in terms of what was denied him, not me. This book should not be marketed as helpful in that regard. It's her personal story. The writing is good. Some of the thinking is clear. But very little of this takes place on the planet I know.

[Sandie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anyone looking at their lives would consider them blessed. Part of the oldest New England blueblood families, wealthy, and blessed with three beautiful children, Sukey Forbes had it all. Her ancestors included not only the Forbes family, but one of her direct ancestors was Ralph Waldo Emerson. They had houses and not a summer cottage, but a summer island, which was the family enclave and where traditions such as sailing, horseback riding, hiking and fishing were considered normal activities.

Then when she was six, the middle child, Charlotte, died. She was fine one day and gone, inexplicably the next. Forbes was left with the realization that no one is safe and no life is blessed to the extent that they are protected from disaster. This book explores what life was like for her afterwards and how she worked through her grief. Her background hemmed her in as a lifetime of being stoic and unemotional was a barrier between her and the grief work she needed to do. She took comfort in the support of family and friends, and from the stories of her ancestors. Emerson, for example, also lost a beloved child at age six, his namesake son.

Nothing really helped. Not religious before, she could not take comfort in religion which to her seemed full of promises with no evidence of reality. After a year or more of grieving and working through various counseling groups, she found something that opened the door to recovery. She met with a medium that knew her story without being told and that gave insight into where Charlotte was now and how she was doing. Although she knew others would not believe her, she found comfort there and continued to work with a medium as she emerged slowly from her overpowering grief.

This is a beautiful book. Every parent's worst fear is the death of their child, yet many of us are called to walk this painful road. Forbes exploration of the landscape of grief could be helpful to others just starting on this journey that never really ends, and that seems impossible to walk. Her portrayal of a life afterwards that will never be the same but can be rewarding in time is a useful message. This book is recommended for readers of memoirs and for those who have also lost a child.

[SouthWestZippy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Taken from the back of the book. " After the death of her six-year-old daughter, Charlotte, Sukey Forbes struggles to come to terms with her loss as she chafes against the emotional reserves and strict self-reliance that are part of her blue-blooded New England heritage. "
I could not relate to much of the book. It has loads of family history, it used to show how she dealt with the loss of her daughter by looking at the family's past. You can feel the emotion of the dealing with the death of her six-year-old, coming to terms with her death and moving on. I could also feel the frustration with the Doctors on trying to find out what she had and after her death on showing what she had. Such a sad, raw story. Writing is so-so and it does drag on here and there but overall a book worth reading.

[Fiona · Rating 4 out of 5]

I couldn’t put this book down. It is such an honest story about every mother’s worst nightmare. I found it very inspirational. It is very well written. I felt that I got to know the locations and characters. Worth reading for sure. I recommend.

[Liralen · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's enough material in this for two separate books, and early on in the book I wasn't sure they fit together, but in the end the background -- the first booksworth -- makes the contemporary parts much more complicated.

First: The author is from old money, from the kind of New England family that sails and rides horses and is thrifty within its excess -- they live in a mansion in the summer and a different mansion in the winter, but they wear hand-me-downs and use packing crates for furniture when they make a temporary move -- and whose children are taught very early on to keep a stiff upper lip. Forbes is a direct descendant of Ralph Waldo Emerson and John Murray Forbes (and it would appear that her extended family includes John Kerry, though I'm not sure exactly what that family tree looks like); her home growing up was steeped in the kind of history that built New England. Guestbooks dating back to the 1800s, letters from major players in American history, curtains considered important to the history of American textiles and destined for a museum.

Second: The author's older daughter died in 2004, at the age of six, from a rare genetic disorder. Much of the book is about the time leading up to Charlotte's death -- when they first found out about the disorder and when she succumbed to it -- and then the author's grief afterwards. What helped the author, eventually, was delving into the spirit world in search of some connection to Charlotte.

Either of these could have worked on its own. The story of grief, of the loss of a child, is not one that needs the background of a privileged upbringing in order to resonate. That story of privileged upbringing, alone, might take more work, but there's an incredible amount of family history to draw on, alongside the author's quest, as a young adult, to throw off that history (and seek new money instead) and then her eventual return to the fold.

The family history is included in part to explain why the author was willing to believe in ghosts and in communication with the dead -- she grew up in houses inhabited by ghosts -- but frankly, that's not the draw of the background. It's not worked in especially well (lumped in near the beginning; if you're finding it a slog, know that it moves back to the less detached modern day in chapter 4), but Forbes' upbringing ended up playing a huge role in the way she grieved, and the way she didn't. This was a family where, when she slammed her fingers in a window, trapping herself, she was afraid to call out for help because causing that level of disturbance just wasn't done; later, not long after Charlotte's death, she says this: Nobody had told me that I couldn't cry in view of the others, but nobody needed to tell me. In being stoic I was simply following through on forty years of conditioning (89-90).

Forbes searches for peace in visits with clairvoyants and psychics -- and has experiences that are, even to a skeptic, hard to dismiss -- but what is far more interesting, to me, is her sense that she just has to be able to open up and hit rock bottom, that doing so is more than anything a relief because once she's hit bottom she can claw her way up from the depths of grief. She can pinpoint that moment, that bottom, because its manifestation is so at odds with the way she was raised. She can see how differently she and her husband are processing grief, and how they are growing into new people because of what they've been through -- what they're still going through -- and how that's gradually splitting them apart.

It is, unsurprisingly, a very sad book, although with a distinct sense of growing peace by the end. I didn't connect with it especially well -- possibly because of the relatively dry chunk of family history so early on; possibly simply because I am not a parent and have never experienced that kind of grief -- but I'd call it complex and, oh, complete.

I received a free copy of this book via a Goodreads giveaway.

[Becky · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is not a light hearted story but I recommend it to anyone who has lost a child or knows someone who has. It brings new understanding and empathy. It’s sad but ends positively and full of hope.

This story tells the process the author goes through while trying to figure out where her young daughter Charlotte is after death and what she believes. The beginning is a little weird. She believes ghosts inhabit their house and shares detailed suicide plans she had as a teen. It's also hard to read of her child's death, but the last half of the book made me think.

When Charlotte is seriously ill in an ambulance to the hospital, “I wanted to pray but didn’t know how.” Ch 2
“The Greeks said we suffer into wisdom.” Ch 2
“Why did she always have to find the cloud in front of every silver lining?” Ch 2
“Underscored the lesson that I should always trust my instincts. Statistics and rational deductions can take you only so far.” Ch 2
“Sorrow makes us all children again.” Ch 2
Game high/low - share high point of day and low, helps with communicating. Ch 3
Very detailed about the death of her daughter.
“There was no drama. My world had simply stopped.” Ch 3
"I was clear that what we'd left behind at the hospital was just a shell, as if her soul had grown too large for its container." Ch 5
"We had taken care of our little Sweetie Pea's every need for six and a half years plus the nine months she'd spent in the miracle of a baby's creation growing inside of me. Now we were supposed to hand her off to strangers to prepare her body for its next phase." Ch 5
"In hindsight I now recognize how important it is for the bereaved to tend to the dead body...Bathing and tending to the body might have allowed the reality of the loss to wash over me...a painful yet helpful transition. In hindsight I have a much deeper appreciation for what a gift it is to the bereaved to be more personally involved in preparing the body for burial. It gives the loss more of a chance to settle into the room. The souls still in this world need a bit more time to absorb the reality of death. I needed a more direct and physical experience with her body to allow myself to start to accept that she was gone." Ch 5
"We were chosen by God to be Charlotte's parents...I think she came here to get what she needed and then she had to move on." Ch 5
"Father Tom sat us down and told us to make sure that we paid attention to any opportunities for happiness or joy or positive thoughts. He reminded us that staying steeped in pain was debilitating, and that the body could handle only so much grief before it broke down." Ch 5
After the death of a child the divorce rate is up to 80%. Ch 5
"Our children were the physical manifestation of our love and our devotion to each other." Ch 5
Poem by Henry van Dyke about a sailboat, was read at the funeral. The boat is gone from our sight but is still just the same as it was when it left us, “Just at the moment when someone at my side says, ‘There, she is gone!’ There are other eyes watching her coming, and other voices ready to take up the glad shout: ‘Here she comes!’” Ch 5
"There is no term for a parent who has lost a child." Ch 6
"I had always felt so alive here. Now I felt utterly numb, bereft, and diminished...I wanted to die, but with two young children to care for and a husband, that wasn't an option...How dreary and endless...until I met Charlotte again...I wanted to want to live." Ch 6
While meditating she imagined she was in an open field and saw Charlotte was with her. She also went to hear a medium and saw Charlotte in her mind. She was happy and well. “It was selfish of me to want to cling to her when she was now in such a good place.” Felt hope for first time in almost a year. Life could be worth living again despite our loss. Emotional pain manifests itself in physical pain. Ch 8
"There were and are many times that I ached for her...but I came to realize that those yearnings were about me and not about her. Charlotte was on her very own and very wonderful path. She was well cared for. She was looking out for us." Ch 8
"I began to have vivid dreams in which her physical presence was absolutely real. It was like the sensation you have when someone is behind you, but then you look and no one's there." Ch 8
“Faith is a requirement of life...We often find faith in our darkest moments, when we have exhausted all other hope and have reached the end of the facts. That does not make the leap of faith or the knowing any less true; it just makes it more accessible to us when we most need it...One can factually verify only so much and then very quickly one needs to accept an idea on faith, completely reject it, or dive in more deeply with questions...Many people move open-mindedly partway down that path and then we get stuck on the questions. Really stuck. So we bail out.” Ch 8
The second year of grief was more difficult than the first for her. Ch 9
“I cannot call her on the phone, but our conversation can continue quietly. In moments of meditation I feel her comforting presence regularly...Knowing that she is still present has made me feel vastly less lonely, and it has brought a calmness and comfort to my soul that has not left me. It also has highlighted the long thread that connects us all from one life to the next. This has made me want to be a better person, wife, mother, friend, and human being...The most important thing going forward was to balance my bereavement for Charlotte with my attention to my surviving children.” Ch 9
“I’d become entirely comfortable with the idea of crossing over, and that was mostly because I was firm in the belief that you don’t really go very far.” Ch 9
“I’ve come to the conclusion that the soul knows when life is about to end, and it prepares. It’s as if life on earth is a school you have to go through in order to pass certain tests and learn special skills. As soon as you master the lessons you’re allowed to go home, to graduate. The greatest of these lessons is unconditional love. It was very important for my own process to be there to help my grandfather make his transition. His spirit was trapped in a body that had worn itself out...and I just couldn’t feel bereft about his passing.” Ch 9
“His passing would be hard for us, but wonderful for him. Having a child on the other side, I’d begun to look at deaths in the family as simply more loved ones gathering around Charlotte...You go find Charlotte and tell her I love her, I told him, and I love you too.” Ch 9
“What we have once enjoyed we can never lose; all that we love deeply becomes a part of us - Helen Keller.” Ch 10
She faces a life threatening situation skiing and realizes she doesn’t want to die yet after all. Ch 10
Her husband becomes really rude to her and she worries about the message his behavior was sending to her son about how to treat women and to her daughter about what she should be willing to accept. “I didn’t want the kids to see me screaming. I wanted them to see me being confident and in control.” Ch 10
“Okay. Maybe I’m back...It’s hard to know the woman I would be today had I not been utterly derailed by the death of my daughter. Even now I find myself cataloging memories in terms of ‘before Charlotte died’ and ‘after Charlotte died’...The passage of time since her death had not softened its impact, but the years have allowed me to file the wound inside of me so that it does not overpower me on a daily basis.”
“The gift of the loss...is to realize just how much is not important in life, and how important it is to let all the unimportant stuff go.” Ch 10
“When I see Charlotte again, I don’t want to have to say, ‘I took to my bed after you died. Losing you just about finished me.’ Instead I want to be able to say, ‘Hey, what have you been doing? This is what I’ve been doing. This is what I learned from losing you while you were still so young.’”
There is a gaping hole in my heart that I don’t expect will ever be filled...But in compensation for that hole, I’ve been able to grow my heart larger...There’s room for grief even while I’m full of life...I’ll stay full of life, for me and for Charlotte, and I’ll honor her life by carrying her through mine.”

Content: some language

[Dianne]

I'm forty pages in yet I haven't found a connection with the author at all. When I read a book, I look for a to find empathy or sympathy for the character or author but I have none for her so far. I'm rather turned off by all the descriptions of her wealth, her privileged childhood, her perceived birthright of having a perfect life and how her family is so much more important and so much better than common people. There have been maybe 3 to 5 pages about her daughter's illness but everything else has been about the author. I'm trying to find a reason to care about her or to finish the book.

[Kristi · Rating 4 out of 5]

I could not stop reading this book. While certain aspects of Sukey Forbes life experience may be hard for many readers to relate to, her book is about a very human experience that may be deeply felt. The sudden loss of Forbes' six year old daughter sends her on a gut-wrenching, heart-rending, transformative journey to find life after death. Forbes' account is moving and inspiring, with a fascinating family history -(she is a descendant of John Murray Forbes and Ralph Waldo Emerson) - in the background. With some narrative inconsistencies and redundancy, her honesty is both flawlessly compelling and admirable.

[Chrissie K]

I know Sukey and so well remember Charlotte's death and how we, her California friends, gathered together here to try to make sense of a life that ended too soon and to celebrate a beautiful little girl . I congratulate Sukey on writing a meaningful and beautiful memoir that both tells us of how she managed her way through the death of a child while also giving us an account of her own childhood growing up as a Forbes, and how these events relate to one another. I found her accounts of her connections with Charlotte after her death to be so interesting and beautifully reassuring.

[Marcy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I won an ARC of this book on first reads. I really wanted to like this book. The title sounded interesting, but the story lacked substance and seemed to drag on and on. The title seemed a little misleading. I felt that the book was more about the Forbe's family history and where they live, then the story of a mother's loss and the search to find answers.

[Melissa Weidner · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. It caused a lot of emotions to stir within me. I highly recommend.
Sending much love your way, Sukey!

[elena j. · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Angel in My Pocket is a deeply personal and unconventional memoir that explores grief, love, and the search for meaning after unimaginable loss. Sukey Forbes writes with openness and restraint, inviting readers into a world where mourning intersects with spiritual curiosity and family history.

What makes the book especially striking is its refusal to frame grief as something to be resolved. The loss of Charlotte remains central and raw, and Forbes does not rush toward comfort or certainty. Instead, she traces a lineage of spiritual inquiry shaped by her family’s history and a distinctly American tradition of seeking that gives context to her exploration of the afterlife.

The strongest sections are those that blend personal grief with cultural memory. The settings, particularly the family island off Cape Cod, create an atmosphere where the spiritual feels less abstract and more lived-in. Forbes approaches clairvoyants and apparitions not as spectacle, but as part of a sincere effort to remain connected to her daughter.

This is a singular memoir that will resonate with readers open to spiritual exploration, grief narratives, and stories about love that persists beyond physical loss.

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

What struck me most about this book was Sukey's honesty about her own mental and spiritual journey through terrible grief -- and her openness about her famous, but private, family's idiosyncrasies. Full disclosure: I'm distantly related to her through marriage and while I have never met her I have spent many glorious days anchored in Hadley's Harbor on Naushon Island beneath that strange and wonderful mansion at the top of the hill overlooking the harbor, and I've explored via dinghy the salty channel that flows by the rock where she sighted the shark. I've always been intrigued by the house and the family, so the book was a real treat. It is no wonder, to me at least, why she had such a difficult time getting at her feelings of loss -- and when she did, not knowing how to express them. I ached for her through the whole book. The only reason I didn't give the book five stars is that I didn't think it was very well edited and seemed drag on at times because it contained unnecessary information and explanations.

[Sandi Goldring · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found the story line to be well written by the author about the loss of her 6 year old daughter to a strange and rare disease. How it devastated her emotionally before she was able over the years to overcome her grief with the help of psychics and friends. How she started drifting away from her husband due to their different ways of coping with this loss. She now feels connected to her daughter and does not fear death, actually will welcome it when it comes. I did feel that the story was a bit disjointed and difficult to follow with the addition of her four generations of family added into the mix.

[Koren · Rating 4 out of 5]

We know from the cover that this book is about dealing with the loss of a child, so it is on the depressing side. The author explores how her upbringing played a part in how she dealt with the death and how she dealt with the death differently from her husband. I think this would be a good book to read to help others who are dealing with the loss of a child to know there are others who share your feelings.

[Lauren James · Rating 5 out of 5]

“This memoir touched me deeply. Sukey Forbes writes with such honesty about grief, love, and the search for meaning after unthinkable loss. Her journey to connect with her daughter Charlotte is both heartbreaking and hopeful. It reminded me that love never dies and that even in sorrow, there can be light.”

[P Walker · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is as much about spiritual awakening as it is about the death of the author's beloved child. Sukey Forbes has a pedigree of money and fame, yet her story is relate-able to those who have lost or have searched and found.

[Shirley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Heartrending story of a family suffering through the loss of a young child. The depth and authenticity of the story holds you together as you plumb the depths of challenges faced by the parents.

Not an easy read but a worthwhile story for all.

[Linda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sad, sad story.

[Kelly Kittel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I met Sukey Forbes this fall at the Boston Book Festival in a crush of people as we descended a spiral staircase in an old church where she'd just finished speaking on a panel about writing about grief. She represented loss of a child on this panel and as I sat listening I thought I could have easily traded places with her. As it turns out, her book was published the same month as Breathe, albeit with a cadre of traditional publishing support. I didn't have to wonder long as to why she didn't receive over 120 versions of "not right for our list" rejections when I later learned that she was of the famous Forbes family. But, as our conversation and my subsequent reading of her memoir would soon attest, in spite of our very different backgrounds, our solidarity is strong.

There are so many similar thoughts and words she and I share in our memoirs. Like this one, as she writes about how yoga taught her to breathe again. "One day at a time.” I began to tell myself, “One breath at a time. Just keep breathing... Breathing is the key to life, of course. You stop, you die. But try as I might I still couldn’t take a full deep breath. Often the air would catch in the back of my throat… Awareness of the breath is also an essential part of yoga, so I went back to my practice, determined to breathe in the air I needed to heal myself, and to breathe out the pain of the grief that had buried itself in every cell of my body." If you've read my book, you know how familiar this sounds.

Her Charlotte was born the year after Noah and they both died in August on dates one week apart but in different years as Charlotte was six when she died of a rare genetic inability to control her temperature. Other similarities include our East meets West lives, our mixed feelings about receiving so many dead flower arrangements, planting a garden for our children, smiling at their funerals, wanting to rend our clothes and wander like deranged women, dressing our children for their funerals, our expressed desire to take them back inside of us, the lifeline of friends who'd been through the same, lamenting the lack of a name to call ourselves, and more. So many times as I read this well-written book I felt like her words could easily have been my own.

When I met Sukey, we chatted briefly about our shared difficulties in marketing a book about every parent's worst nightmare and vowed to be in touch. And so, I think, we shall. She writes, “My future – in fact my purpose in life – was going to be about making other people comfortable with the kind of loss I’d suffered.” Indeed.

[Lauren · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was given this book by a friend who suggested it as a salve for my own recent loss. I must say I did find that Sukey's journey did not mirror mine in that her loss was the devastating and incomparable one of losing a child and mine was the very different loss of an aged parent. However, the questions remain the same...where did they go?
I thought this was going to be a book about her continuing interactions with her spirit daughter, but of course she doesn't have daily visitations from her. It's also a surprisingly long time before she gets to the parts in the book where she DOES start to "commune" with Charlotte. It is a story of a bigger vision of life on Earth, connection to Nature and the legacy of family and ancestry. This part I really liked, and felt a tinge of envy about. Sukey is a Forbes and a Saltonstall, two of America's families from the nexus of our existence as contemporary country. She shares and leans on these connections heavily throughout the book all of which are heavily documented and easily accessed at her multiple family compounds. Her distant relative is Ralph Waldo Emerson, and there are interesting links to his beliefs, writings and experiences.
So, on the one hand, I appreciated these details, but on the other hand, they were an annoying distraction. I lost count of how many times she refers to her "WASP" reactions, and her "Boston Brahmin" upbringing. (Is it possible, or perhaps probable that her reaction was not a WASP reaction but a human reaction? I think it's called shock.) This is vital to her story, but it only served to make me feel distant from her, and I am sure everyone else who wasn't born with a silver spoon in her mouth. She makes a fair effort to assure us she had to saddle up the horses, cut down saplings, herd sheep and eat boring food at long tables with various extended family at either their California ranch, private New England island or New Hampshire ski lodge, but it did not intensify my feeling of sympathy and understanding of her loss and her journey. At times, I felt like "wait, what book am I reading again?"
There is simply no way to account for the grief that she endured in the very sudden and terrible loss of her daughter...it is the most devastating thing I have read about in near memory. It is a comfort to read about redemption of life after loss and to know that we recover and that there is hope.

[Betsy · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Angel in My Pocket leads us through the choices to be made in the face of tremendous loss and despair. The author deftly weaves her family background (never taking herself too seriously, as is evidenced by her tongue in cheek descriptions of certain bits of family lore and her self deprecating wit, which pops up throughout the book) and its emphasis on keeping a stiff upper lip regardless of the situation, into her own personal approach to plowing through grief and arriving at a certain peace. Just as it's clearly in her genes to be stoic and strong, it's also in her genes to be a seeker. As a reader, I felt as though her great-great-great grandfather, Ralph Waldo Emerson, one the founders of the Transcendentalist movement in America, was speaking directly to her through many of his best known works, including his 1837 speech, "The American Scholar" and his 1841 essays, "The Over-Soul" and "Self-Reliance". Sukey Forbes, in the Emersonian vein, rebuilds her own world. She does so in her own time and on her own terms, and she relies heavily on a sense of place throughout her journey. She finds healing and comfort and the strength to follow her intuition, which tells her that she can, and will, connect with her daughter Charlotte. She proceeds to follow her heart and soul, and that Emersonian individualism, self-reliance and belief that all souls are ultimately "One", to make an amazing and truly comforting connection with Charlotte. With her book The Angel in My Pocket, Sukey Forbes pulls back the curtain on what it's like to experience the single most devastating tragedy that could possibly befall a parent and a family. Her brutally honest, singularly beautiful and truly wise (and wry!!) words remind us that no one is immune to loss or to the pain and heartache that follow. I found the book truly inspiring, and it left me with a better understanding of the great gifts that can emerge from the depths of profound sorrow.

[Stephanie Ward · Rating 4 out of 5]

'The Angel in My Pocket' is a magnificent mix of a mother's mission to reconnect with her deceased daughter in the afterlife, and a memoir of the author's experiences with paranormal entities and occurrences. The way the story is written, especially from the first person point of view, makes it easy to slide into the book - like the author is beside you telling the story. There are so many different aspects to the book - from the grief of losing a child and a parent's unconditional love to the mystical and unexplainable that surrounds us every day.

I found myself immediately immersed into the story and empathizing with the author and her struggles - first in dealing with her sick daughter and then drowning in grief after her passing. I found it fascinating that the author went a very different spiritual way than most would - she followed her family's history of clairvoyance and occult tendencies to try to connect with her daughter again. I am a huge fan of the occult and ghosts, so that part of the book really fascinated me. I loved all the stories that the author shared - from old family stories to personal encounters. It really opens the mind to possibilities in the world that many discredit. The conversational tone of the memoir sent me on an emotional roller coaster - from deep sadness and grief to hope and then excitement and the endless possibilities that are out there. There's something that every person can relate to in the story, so it appeals to a wide audience of readers. I found it to be heartbreaking and beautiful - along with completely unique and thought provoking. Highly recommended for fans of all genres, as well as those who enjoy something fresh and original.

Disclosure: I received a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

[Jeanne Bracken · Rating 4 out of 5]

I suppose I picked this book off the library new book shelf because of my background in childhood cancer. I have read a lot of books about parents who have lost children, and I recommended a lot of them in the two editions of CHILDREN WITH CANCER. Forbes' daughter did not die of cancer but of a rare genetic disease, and her death was more abrupt than is the case with cancer as a rule. Forbes' Boston Brahmin stiff-upper-lip background didn't equip her for the emotional wrench that the death brought to her admittedly comfortable life. I was surprised to read how dysfunctional her loving family upbringing had been. The memoir is beautifully written and thought-provoking, as she struggles to find acceptance of her daughter's death, her husband's coping mechanisms (so different from her own) and finally to seeking contact with her daughter through a medium. People of faith will appreciate the reassurance that this contact brings to her, and most readers are likely to be surprised at the continued contact through others even when she didn't seek it. (I can't figure out what the plural of medium is.) I was especially intrigued by this book because I read it about the same time as GYPSY BOY, which reveals a wholly different dysfunctional childhood but which had echos of Forbes' background.

[Chrissy (The Every Free Chance Reader) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Did I enjoy this book: I enjoyed parts of it.

The sleeve of the book described it as a story of a woman’s grief following the loss of her six-year-old daughter. But this book contained two unrelated stories.

First, we had a story about a mother losing her daughter to a rare genetic disorder. This story was painfully honest and gut wrenching. Forbes didn’t pull any punches describing the unfathomable sorrow of her experience. She gave a voice to the emotions we’ve all experienced but struggled to express. She did it in a way that was beautiful, relatable, and courageous.

If she stopped there and focused on the events surrounding that phase of her life, this would have been a grand slam success. I didn’t understand why she included several, lengthy chapters explaining her family’s history. It was interesting but seemed out of place in the book. It should have been its own story in a different book.

As reviewed by Belinda at Every Free Chance Books.

Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

http://everyfreechance.com/2014/08/be...

[Rita Carpenter · Rating 1 out of 5]

I heard the author on NPR, and I thought "I must read this book." In retrospect, I wish that I had just left it with the interview because that covered all the highlights for me. As someone who also lost a loved one and struggles with the big question of where are they now, I had hoped that I could relate to the author, but that was as far as it could go. There were no connections on any other level. I found the reliance on family names (Forbes, Saltonstall, Emerson) tiresome. If anyone is looking for advice on how to go on living when you don't even want to get out of bed, there is a message for you in this book, but unfortunately, it is buried in the recollections of the authors' trips to various family properties. For those of us of lesser economic means, you will have to stretch the imagination to see how this approach can fit into your life.

It is also a relatively expensive book... $27.95 for 240 pages.

Oh, and for those who may run off to visit with a medium after reading this, be prepared... not everyone gets the wonderful message that their loved one is at peace.

[Clarissa]

I always feel I can't rate a nonfiction book because it's so personal and very unlike writing a work of fiction; with this book particularly, I can not judge a person's grief. However, Forbes spent an extraordinary amount of time writing more about her blue-bloodline than anything else. I was expecting more in terms of her grief process and how she coped but got a familiar vibe that she was trying to write a transcendental aspect of everything. Her feelings were too detached from what I would expect when writing from a first-person point of view. Grief is hard and I can imagine it really takes so much to work on a marriage and still be a parent to other children. I give her kudos for doing the best she could.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent book describing the way a mother and her family grieve in the wake of childhood death. She describes the experience she has with a medium and trying to connect with her daughter through these means. The raw description of her feelings of guilt towards her daughter's death, shame over not being emotional enough or too emotional at times, and her desire for closure are given in a way that you can relate even without experiencing such loss. I would recommend this book for parents dealing with their own personal grief, to have an idea of how unique the grieving process is for every individual.