The Reluctant Psychic: A Memoir

A gripping and unsettling portal into the life of a woman who lives in many worlds, some wildly far from and some eerily near to our own

As children we all had our imaginary friends and monsters in the closet. But for Suzan Saxman, those friends and monsters didn't go away—and they weren't imaginary.

From an early age, Suzan knew instinctively that she had to hide her true self. She couldn't talk about the specters that haunted her, waking and dreaming. In bed with a childhood fever, rat-faced winged beings guarded her; bullied and friendless at school, she ate lunch silently under the steps of St. Theresa's with the ghost of a nun; paralyzed with fear, she woke each night to see a man with no eyes, watching her; and she kept watch at the window, every day, while her Daddy was at work and Steve, her real father, was with her mother. It was the 1960s, suburban Staten Island, and she tried to hide it, tried to silence the spirits, ghosts, and demons, tried to be a daughter her mother could love. Like many memoirs, Suzan's is the story of a mother and a daughter: of a mother who refused to accept both her strangely gifted daughter and her own personal buried secrets and of a daughter who grew more and more isolated as she floated adrift in a family to which she did not feel she belonged.

Now, with Perdita Finn, Suzan tells the story of her journey, revealing and celebrating both the joy and terror, the fulfillment and sadness of a life lived between worlds, the loneliness and power of seeing and understanding things no one else can.