Keeper of Souls – A Discussion of the final Faith Healer’s Daughters book

Some Spoilers Ahead!

Elizabeth was always going to be different.  She was dark, more mature, more isolated.  She’d been brainwashed by her cult-leader father and in the first two books was actually a villain.  In Keeper of the Dead, the book opens up with Elizabeth helping her father trap her mother’s spirit in limbo in order to lure her sisters to the compound and within her father’s reach.

At first, Elizabeth is so sheltered and so controlled by her father she really thinks she’s doing what’s best for her sisters.  He convinces her that her sisters had been kidnapped the night of her mother’s death by people who brainwashed them and convinced her sisters that their father was a murderer.  The man is convincing and Elizabeth is always trying to win his affection and admiration so she becomes what he needs her to be when he needs her to be it.

Once she betrays her sisters in Keeper of the Light she begins to question some of what her father’s been telling her.  You find out that Elizabeth was instrumental in making changes in the compound to better the lives of the women there.  But, her father gives just small concessions to her as a way to manipulate her.  He’s waiting to find out if any of his daughters come into powers of their own so he can then marry them to men of his choosing so they have children with power, keeping the father’s legacy intact and his power absolute.

In Keeper of the Dead Elizabeth finally comes to realize her sisters were right and that she has made some horrible mistakes.  She does her best to help, but in the end can’t forgive herself and strikes out on her own.  She doesn’t believe her sisters can really accept her.

Also in Keeper of the Dead we meet a very mischievous, yet charming ghost named Cole who tricks Amber during a trade and takes half of Ryan’s soul in order to become flesh and blood once more.  Cole has been a Keeper of the Dead, a sort of sheriff among ghosts, since the 1800’s and he’s pretty excited about being about to leave the cemetery at last.  Of course, the world has changed and he stick close to the sisters, Ivy and Amber, while he learns the ropes.  This is how he meets Elizabeth and there’s some brewing chemistry between the two that never quite makes the mark.  In Keeper of Souls, it is Cole who is sent to Europe to find Elizabeth.

Keeper of Souls opens with Elizabeth making bad decisions yet again.  In order to find family, she goes back to what she knows and ends up releasing her grandfather, a man so powerful that even her evil father feared him.  The grandfather and an evil uncle take her with them to France where they start putting together a group of people to help re-create the compound takedown by the sisters.  Elizabeth realizes she’s made a horrible mistake but has no guidance, no one to help her escape or tell her what to do.  When Cole shows up unexpectedly to bring her back to her sisters she takes the chance and leaves with him.  He is her only way out, though she’s not sure she can face her sisters once they all find out she’s freed her grandfather.

Cole and Elizabeth race across Europe, the UK into Ireland and finally back to the US.  But, they’re being chased, Elizabeth is coming into her own power, and Cole has his own agenda.  Elizabeth and Cole must learn to think of others, not always be first, learn to trust, learn what loyalty costs and provides and find they are more alike than they could have imagined, all while fighting a mutual attracting they don’t have time for.

Since Keeper of the Light I knew how Elizabeth’s story, Keeper of Souls, would end.  I always knew we’d come back to Brooklyn.  I spend so much time at the cemetery there in Brooklyn. I have lots of photos from my visits there.  I saw a statue there that I just couldn’t stop thinking about.  In my mind I saw it come to life, rise up from the ground, and move.  There would be a great and final battle there.  And in the end, there was.

The Angel of Death