Book 1 and 2 of The Makaila Series

 

A PW DOWDY BOOK NOTE

In Forever Becoming book 1 and 2, Kasey Klein offers a world akin to that place most of us find only when we seek refuge from reality. 

A moment of rest, dream stuff which our sleep uses to alter our consciousness, the refreshment of a mid-day meditation—all can become a healing balm for an anxiety filled human spirit.

Enters thirteen-year-old Makaila Marie Carleton, innocent, and precocious.  Add to this setting one Alvin Percy, community pillar with a penchant for child brides. Percy’s modus operandi is not a unique one.

Seduce an unaware young girl with promises of marriage, have her satisfy wanton imaginations, and then dispense with her. He has killed all of his brides before Makaila and she is to become his seventh. The kindness of the universe smiled on the child-bride that cold November evening, causing circumstances to reverse. Before the night’s finish, Makaila has killed Alvin Percy.

 

What becomes of a child accused of murdering a community pillar? Kasey Klein’s unraveling of the question becomes the plot of Forever Becoming book 1 and 2.

Makaila eventually discovers places in the real world and in her world of solace and refuge where she can examine what has happened to her. Preachers, law enforcement friends, a lesbian lover, spirit guides, carnival people adept in both worlds — all help Makaila to bridge her quest for understanding.

As Kasey Klein unfolds this story, other support characters’ lives become gravely affected by Makaila’s arrest and her subsequent mysterious disappearance — so it seems — from the universe.

Her brother Larry becomes so despondent over his loss that he soon raises a cult of teens who worship the presumably dead Makaila and who collectively await her Second Coming. The teen cult members name her, She, who is like God.

Then there is Terri. Terri is an eleven-year-old cult follower whose closeness to Larry leads her to believe in her own spiritual powers. What happens to both Larry and Terri allows Klein to create two of the novel's oh so dynamic subplots.

 

Klein uses this saga-like novel to examine human beliefs. Whether those beliefs are traditionally faith based ones or whether they are derived from new-age philosophy and/or cultism, Klein makes a point of an age-old adage. If we are not already One with what we believe in — we are Forever Becoming so.

 

Under the same cover, Kasey Klein divides Forever Becoming into Book 1 and Book 2. In the first book, hardly a reader exists who will not immediately love Makaila. Klein takes care to bring out the child’s beauty and her innocence.

In the novel’s second book, Makaila struggles to understand the concept of good and evil. Could this duality exist in each of us? Is there no right or wrong except as manners or customs make it so? What is this notion called Choice that levels the playing fields for every single one of us? Indeed, Makaila is thirteen years old going on a thousand — that is, if Time itself is a measure of anything at all.

Kasey Klein probes our human condition with a veracity that ought to awaken the sleepwalkers among us. Who knows if that November night had not occurred, what contribution Makaila might have later made to the world.

Forever Becoming warns that our children are our most precious resources. If we do any good at all, we must protect all children from the harm that can be done to them by the likes of one Alvin Percy.