From the bestselling author of She's Not There comes another buoyant, unforgettable memoir--I'm Looking Through You is about growing up in a haunted house...and making peace with the ghosts that dwell in our hearts.

For Jennifer Boylan, creaking stairs, fleeting images in the mirror, and the remote whisper of human voices were everyday events in the Pennsylvania house in which she grew up in the 1970s. But these weren't the only specters beneath the roof of the mansion known as the "Coffin House." Jenny herself--born James--lived in a haunted body, and both her mysterious, diffident father and her wild, unpredictable sister would soon become ghosts to Jenny as well.

I'm Looking Through You is an engagingly candid investigation of what it means to be "haunted." Looking back on the spirits who invaded her family home, Boylan launches a full investigation with the help of a group of earnest, if questionable, ghostbusters. Boylan also examines the ways we find connections between the people we once were and the people we become. With wit and eloquence, Boylan shows us how love, forgiveness, and humor help us find peace--with our ghosts, with our loved ones, and with the uncanny boundaries, real and imagined, between men and women.

Dirty DeedsI was in a biker bar. There were worse places. My colleagues, who had names like Lumpy and Gargoyle, thought no less of me simply because I was an English professor. It's nothing to be ashamed of, one dude suggested. It's what's inside your heart that counts.

The venue--the Astrid Hotel, in Astrid, Maine--was famous not only for the skankiness of its patrons but also for its ghost, an undead girl who walked its tattered hallways weeping in her pajamas. She'd drowned in the twenties, in the nearby Kennebec River. The girl was determined, supposedly, to find her father and her sister, who'd been guests of the hotel, back in the day. Hey. Don't you know I can't swim?

I had come to the Astrid to play with my friends in an R&B band, Blue Stranger, up on the hotel's grandiose stage, in what had once been a fancy ballroom. Now it had a cement floor, fiberglass tiles on the ceiling. On one wall was a rough-hewn mural of the north country. There were lumberjacks hoisting logs with skidders, fur trappers trudging through the woods on snowshoes. The Astrid Hotel itself was depicted on the mural as it once had been: a genteel mansion perched on a ridge overlooking Carrabec Falls.

It was on a rock at the bottom of the falls that they'd found the girl.

Over at the pool table, guys with tattoos and beards employed the ladies' bridge. There were mill workers and river guides, taxidermists and hippies. The bouncer chalked his cue. To his left and right were guys named Sleepy, Gangrene, Itchy, Monster, Weasel, and Happy.

The last song of the first set was "Somebody to Love," the Jefferson Airplane number. I was playing Farfisa organ through an old Leslie amplifier.

Your eyes, I say your eyes may look like his
But in your head baby I'm afraid you don't know where it is.

I liked this song all right. But sometimes, I don't know. It left me dispirited.

During the break, we all went up to the bar. The band's lead singer, my friend Shell, ordered me a drink.

I got out the book I was reading--Pale Fire, by Nabokov.

Shell looked over and sighed. "Hey. Professor Glasses. What now?"

I smiled. "It's a fake poem. And then there's commentary on the poem, written by somebody who doesn't exist."

She sighed. "Whatever."

"It's really interesting," I said.

When she wasn't leaping around the stage of the Astrid Hotel in spandex, Shell was the vice president of a savings bank. "You think?" she said.

I cleared my throat.

"Was he in Sherlock Holmes, the fellow whose
Tracks pointed back when he reversed his shoes?"

She smiled. "You really do live in your own little world, don't you?" she said fondly.

"That's so wrong?"

The bartender put two clear, fizzing drinks in front of us. There were what looked like prunes on the bottom. Shell handed me a glass.

"What's this?"

We clinked. "Fart in the Ocean," she said. "Tequila and Seven--Up."

"Served--with a prune?"

"Served," she said, "with a prune."

Why is it, I wondered, that women have to drink the undrinkable? In my day, I had seen my sisters order everything from a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster (vodka, cider, cherry brandy, and Tia Maria) to a Warsaw Waffle (an unspeakable union of vodka and Maine maple syrup). Would it be so wrong if once in a while we had a nice pint of Guinness instead? But whenever I had a Guinness it was inevitable that one of my girlfriends would come up to me and say, You know how many calories are in that, Jenny? As many as a steak dinner! This, from someone who was drinking something called The Screaming Chocolate Monkey.

From the other end of the...

JENNIFER FINNEY BOYLAN is Professor of English at Colby College and the author of the bestseller She’s Not There, as well as the acclaimed novels The Planets and Getting In. A three-time guest of The Oprah Winfrey Show, she has also appeared on Larry King Live, Today, and 48 Hours, and has played herself on ABC’s All My Children. She lives in Belgrade Lakes, Maine.