My Life as a Seer: The Lost Memoirs

Excerpts from diaries, dictated memoirs and public talks were pieced together to form this posthumous autobiography of Cayce (1877-1945), a celebrated psychic and spiritualist whose ideas are considered to have anticipated the New Age movement. He called himself a ""reader,"" and tells how, from an early age growing up on a Kentucky farm, ""celestial visitors"" came to speak ""through"" him. Early on, questioning whether his ability to see the future and past came from God or the devil, he turned to the Bible for solace. Moving to Louisville as an enterprising young man, he began to perform ""healings"" of the sick. As he grew older and gained a following, he started his own institute, which he used as a platform to espouse his metaphysical philosophies. These ""prophesies"" included a strong belief in reincarnation, that humans are returning souls living in eternity; Cayce called this ""spiritual reassurance."" Narrator Ready is impassioned without coming across as too grandiose, allowing Cayce's indelibly American life as a kook/genius to explain itself in straight, old-fashioned terms. Based on the St. Martin's hardcover. (Oct.)