In the Spirit: Conversations with the Spirit of Jerry Garcia

As the first sentence warns, ""This is not a book about the man Jerry Garcia."" The conversations recorded here are not with the Jerry of this earth, the Jerry who led the Grateful Dead into megastardom. Rather, Weir, the sister of former Dead guitarist Bob Weir, has channeled Jerry's ""Oversoul,"" that ""advanced spiritual being or expression of All That Is who exists in the higher spiritual dimensions, aspects of whom have been or are incarnate on Earth or other dimensions."" Weir, who works in ""financial marketing"" and previously wrote two environmentalist children's books, first tried to make contact when her brother wanted her to check in on Jerry's spirit right after he died. Jerry's earth spirit wouldn't communicate, so what followed was a long period of conversations with Jerry's Oversoul (or ""JO,"" as Weir refers to him throughout the book) about how to fulfill Jerry's life's purpose, thus allowing him to ascend to the next plane. Not until almost the end of the book is Jerry's earth spirit able to communicate with Weir, so most of what's recorded here are the pontifications of the Oversoul alongside Weir's own account of her path to personal enlightenment--she learned to stop trying to be ""perfect"" and ""accept the fact that it is okay to be loved for myself."" The message JO sends to Jerry's former band members is simple: keep making music, because it represents a connection to ""All That Is."" By taking readers' belief in--and knowledge of--New Age arcana for granted, Weir is unlikely to win many converts, even among Deadheads. (July) FYI: Linda Keen's Across the Universe with John Lennon (Hampton Roads, $14.95 paper 328p ISBN 1-57174-137-2), also out in July, is based on her psychic ""conversations"" with the departed Beatles great.