What the Dead Can Do
Book by Peter Rosch (2025)
Note: We read this book as an advanced review copy (ARC) given to our parent companies, everafterbooks.uk and theubergroup.org.
Good parents will go to almost any lengths to ensure the safety of a child? Evolution has hard-wired most animals to protect their young. Is there a limit to such love?
These are questions Peter Rosch asks in his supernatural thriller, What the Dead Can Do? Parenthood is complicated enough in the land of the living, especially when our children are small, ever so squishy, and vulnerable. A baby’s fontanel isn’t even fused together until nine or eighteen months, so their little melons are quite fragile.
The story begins with the tragedy of Flight 2332 and the miracle boy, Ethan, the sole survivor. Tag, his father, had asked his best friend Matthew and wife Nicole to be Ethan’s guardians should something happen to both him and his wife Amanda. When we agree to such things, we do not think that death is imminent.
“Flight 2332 was a national tragedy a divided citizenry could get behind. If you watched the evening news, you knew about Matthew and Nicole’s new son, knew him by the moniker sensationalism had provided, “The Miracle Boy”...
Nicole is hardly up to the task of dealing with her twelve-year-old daughter, Emily, much less the addition of a traumatized three-year-old. For years, she has been stifling her feelings of inadequacy and rage with Xanax pills and gallons of alcohol, and she has no wish to change.
Young Emily seems to be the only one up to the task of caring for Ethan, and she is only twelve years old. Without Emily, poor Ethan would not have breakfast. The toddler has not entered the best of situations.
“Nicole and Dad hadn’t made Ethan’s breakfast a priority. She had plenty to say about it -- but why bother.?”
“Mom. The last time she remembered calling her Mom, she’d been six.”
Tag and Amanda’s souls are in the shadowy nothingness of Second Plane, where anything is possible, where you can design any environment or body you wish, you just can’t leave permanently. The never-seen council gives each “resident” a text, and an assigned mentor. While Tag throws himself into the new afterlife, Amanda resists. Eventually, both wonder about the veracity of the text and their mentors.
The dead can visit the land of the living, First Plane, to observe those they left behind. Ever feel eyes on your back? It is a deceased friend or relative peeking in on you. Imagine your fury if you saw the woman tasked with caring for your vulnerable child ignore his cries. What would you do if you could do something?
With Ethan’s arrival comes the media circus that hounds the family. Matthew refuses to make money from the tragedy. After Nicole smashes a liquor bottle into the face of Claire Bear, a nosy, rude journalist-wannabe, ACS descends.
Fortunately, caseworker Tamira is a recovering alcoholic herself and wants to help the struggling family heal and move forward. This visit propels Nicole into rehab and changes things for the struggling family.
As Nicole gets better and rises to the challenge of motherhood, getting to know Ethan, and reconnecting with Emily, Amanda’s worry sickens into jealousy. When does a mother’s love become necrotic? What happens when mother and father disagree on the best course of action for their child?
What the Dead Can Do is about the stories we tell ourselves regarding our identities within the family structure. Amanda and Nicole are mothers. What does it mean to be a mother? Tag and Matthew are fathers. What happens when your reason for being is gone, but you feel your child like a phantom limb.
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