While selecting best-selling novels for the VFA bookstore, I faced the question: What distinguishes a novel as visionary fiction?

Two people whose opinion I value—John Alegeo, Professor Meritus of English at the University of Georgia and Vice President of the Theosophical Society, and Hal Zina Bennett, PhD, Author-Publishing Consultant, provided a guideline to narrow my choices:

“Visionary fiction reveals aspects of this world that are sharply at variance with the common assumptions of the man-in-the-street about what his world is really like. It helps the reader to see the world in a new light, to recognize dimensions of reality that we commonly ignore. It transforms our vision of ourselves and our environment.” ~John Algeo“Visionary fiction reaches beyond the surface of things, touching the deeper mysteries of the human experience beyond ordinary, everyday consensual reality.” ~Hal Zina Bennett, PhD, Author-Publishing Consultant“Visionary fiction is more obviously ‘spiritual’ in nature and an individual’s movement towards self-actualization is a primary theme.” ~ Tahlia Newland, Editor, Author, Publisher

At the time of this writing, 139 books
are listed in the VFA Bookstore (those of best-selling authors and of VFA
members who have contributed in some way to our website). With more to come.

To help new readers find books in
this genre, I’ve come up with examples of visionary fiction written by some of
my favorite best-selling authors, for which I’ve provided descriptions,
favorite quotations, and inks over a series of posts.

After that, I’ll do the same for visionary fiction written
by less-well-known, but equally deserving VFA members.

If you have suggestions for a novel from the VFA Bookstore to include in my series, share in “Comments” those titles you’ve read and for which you’ve posted a review on Amazon, Barnes & Nobles, or Kobo that I can reference in my post.

I’m also interested in novels written by VFA members that
have won various book awards.

So, here are some great books I’ve personally read and loved
that feed the heart and soul. I won’t give you a detailed synopsis of the
story. You can read our bookstore description for that. However, I will provide
you with some of my favorite quotes from each book.

The
Angel’s Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafon: In this powerful, labyrinthian thriller, David Martín is a pulp fiction
writer struggling to stay afloat. Holed up in a haunting abandoned mansion in
the heart of Barcelona, he furiously taps out story after story, becoming
increasingly desperate and frustrated. Thus, when he is approached by a
mysterious publisher offering a book deal that seems almost too good to be
real, David leaps at the chance. But as he begins the work, and after a visit
to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, he realizes that there is a connection
between his book and the shadows that surround his dilapidated home and that
the publisher may be hiding a few troubling secrets of his own.

FAVORITE QUOTE
FROM BOOK: “A writer never forgets the first time he accepted a few coins or a
word of praise in exchange for a story. He will never forget the sweet poison
of vanity in his blood and the belief that, if he succeeds in not letting
anyone discover his lack of talent, the dream of literature will provide him
with a roof over his head, a hot meal at the end of the day, and what he covets
the most: his name printed on a miserable piece of paper that surely will
outlive him. A writer is condemned to remember that moment, because from then
on he is doomed and his soul has a price.”

Keeping
Faith by Jodi Picoult: An
addictively readable novel that makes you wonder about God. And that is a rare
moment, indeed, in modern fiction.

FAVORITE QUOTES FROM BOOK: “This is
1999. Those things don’t happen anymore. Those phenomena get x-rayed and
carbon-tested and scientifically proven to be fakes.” “I’ve never believed that
spirit comes from religion. It comes from deep inside each of us; it draws
people to us. And your daughter has a lot of it.” “The thing about having
something hidden in your past is that you spend every minute of the future building
a wall that makes the monster harder to see. You convince yourself that the
wall is sturdy and thick, and one day, when you wkake up and the horrible
things does not immediately jump into your mind, you give yourself the freedom
to pretend that it is well and truly gone. Which only makes it that much more
painful when something like this happens, and you learn that the concrete wall
is really as transparent as glass, and twice as fragile.”

Drawing
in the Dust by Zoe Klein: Brilliant archaeologist Page Brookstone has toiled at
Israel’s storied battlegrounds of Megiddo for twelve years, yet none of the
ancient remnants she has unearthed deliver the life-altering message she
craves. Which is why she risks her professional reputation when a young Arab
couple begs her to excavate beneath their home. Ibrahim and Naima Barakat claim
the spirits of two lovers overwhelm everyone who enters with love and desire.
As Page digs, she makes a miraculous discovery—the bones of the deeply troubled
prophet Jeremiah locked in an eternal embrace with a mysterious woman. Buried
with the entwined skeletons is a collection of scrolls that challenge
centuries-old interpretations of the prophet’s story and create a worldwide
fervor. 

FAVORITE QUOTE FROM BOOK: “Midnight is the
most intimate of instants. The most hollow, superstitious, lost-in-the-woods,
something’s-in-the-attic moment of the day. Twelve is the knifepoint between
the day’s deepest darkening and the commencement of its lightening, the kiss
between the kingdom of the moon and the kingdom of the sun. It is a
razor-breadth’s flash between despair and hope.“

Spirit
Circle by Hal Zina Bennett:
When anthropologist Tara Fairfield gets a cryptic message from her long-lost
father, a tabloid reporter who specializes in alien-abduction narratives, she
sets off for his last known whereabouts: Coyote Mesa on the Zuni Indian
reservation in New Mexico. It’s an odd place, complete with spotty cell-phone
reception and local stories of witchcraft and flying saucers. Tara is soon
besieged by uncanny experiences: strange images on motel TV sets; mesmerizing
lights and episodes of lost time; apparitions of Katchinas, the eight-foot
masked bird-men of Zuni myth; and visions of Hollywood heartthrob James Dean
telling her that “the world you believe you have mastered is an illusion.”

FAVORITE QUOTES FROM BOOK: “These revelations
echoed what she had been saying for years—that one day there would be evidence
to show that the shamanic traditions on this continent predated both
Christianity and Judaism by at least 2,000 years.” “Who were these people? What
magic did they invoke, allowing them to see beyond what scholar-philosopher
William James had once described as the ‘filmy veil’ that separates everyday
life from this other reality that theologians and spiritual leaders have been
exploring for centuries.? And what records did these ancient shaman-priests
leave behind? What artifacts? Somewhere out there, hidden even from probing
aircraft, this ancient village, perhaps already buried under centuries of
decaying adobe and desert dust, waited for her to pull back the veil and reveal
its secrets.”

Life Expectancy by Dean Koontz: The story of five days in the life of an
ordinary man born to an extraordinary legacy—a story that will challenge the
way you look at good and evil, life and death, and everything in between.

FAVORITE
QUOTES FROM BOOK: “I wrote this to explain life to myself. The mystery.
The humor, dark and light, that is the warp and weft of the weave. The
absurdity. The terror. The hope. The joy, the grief. The God we never see
except by indirection. In this I have failed.” “I can’t explain the why of
life, the patterns of its unfolding. I can’t explain it—but, oh, how I love
it.” Insanity is not evil, but all evil is insane. Evil itself is never funny,
but insanity sometimes can be. We need to laugh at the irrationality of evil,
for in doing so we deny evil’s power over us, diminish its influence in the
world, and tarnish the allure it has for some people.

The post Novels that Feed the Mind and Soul appeared first on Margaret Duarte.