Sadie's Song

By JR Keen

Sadie’s Song is the unforgettable tale of a heart transplant recipient who inherits a part of his donor’s soul.

What is death? Is there really a tunnel...a brilliant light at the end...an afterlife? Do we really have a soul?

Andy Campbell asks these questions while desperately waiting for a new heart. As his time runs out, he fears nothing awaits on the other side.

His salvation will come from a stranger’s horrific demise, along with a mysterious new gift for music, a gift that will lead him to discover his missed destiny...and the soul he always had but never knew.

Masterfully penned, intensely compelling, Sadie’s Song’s stunning conclusion will leave you pondering the secrets of your soul.

• Language: English
• Publisher: JR Keen
• Release date: Aug 18, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476103372

JR Keen

JR Keen is an emerging American novelist and short story writer from Kansas City, Missouri. The son of U.S. Army parents, he was born in Heidelberg, Germany. At three his family relocated to Kansas City, MO where his father took a sales position. As a boy, Keen aspired earnestly to become a locomotive driver, the first human to walk on Mars, a submarine pilot, a fighter pilot, an American Indian, an outdoorsman, a painter and president of the United States. Eventually he settled for business administration and studied such at Northwest Missouri State University. There his instructors took note of his writing ability and encouraged him to pursue work in literature. Keen ignored that advice. Instead, following college, he held a string of managerial positions in corporate America. In 2006, believing he may get rich, he launched an entrepreneurial venture selling automotive wiring products; however, frustrated with his lagging progress – and broke – in 2010 he changed his focus to writing. JR Keen’s fiction typically involves multiple themes...ethical dilemmas, spirituality, humanity’s hidden nature, contemporary culture and the discovery of one’s purpose are a few. In particular, he is fascinated with the human condition and the need to understand why.

Book preview

Sadie’s Song

Smashwords Edition

ISBN: 9781476103372

Copyright 2012 by JR Keen. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this work or any portion thereof in any form whatsoever.

Sadie’s Song is a work of fiction. The entities and persons depicted herein are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual entities or persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.

Special thanks to Mark for contributing to Sadie’s Song’s premise.

Discover more about the author—and treat yourself to the complementary short story Beneath the Covers, a tale of finding security in an insecure world—at "JR Keen - Author" on Facebook.

Sadie’s Song

It’s such an extraordinary thing, music. It’s the language of the spirit. If you believe we contain within our skin and bones a spirit that might last longer than your time breathing in and out, music is the thing that wakes it up. And it certainly woke up mine. And it seems to be how we communicate on another level.

— Bono (paraphrased)

1

These thoughts since it happened:

Where does the soul reside in my body, Father? The head, the heart?

Music is the soul’s expression.

The soul comes from God.

After death your soul endures.

Yes, these thoughts. Every day.

2

At one o’clock on a brilliant spring day my legs dangled from an examination table, the room smelled sterile.

Beyond the little window, outside in the sun, birds bickered and dogs walked their owners. In here, in this place that I despised though it had given me life, Doctor Edler was the third appointment out of six. The afternoon was going to draw out like a knife, I could feel it, but I was in high spirits regardless. A new song had come to mind even as Doctor Edler was asking:

…have you been eating fatty foods?

No, sir.

Drinking caffeine?

No.

Consuming alcohol?

No.

Doin’ any drugs?

No.

Having sex?

Nope. I’m a happily married man. I don’t have sex.

"I see…so what do you do for fun, anyway?"

This was a place of human dissection, of handshakes and how-do-you-dos, of biopsies taken and treadmills jogged. Needles were stuck, blood drawn. Cups given empty, cups returned full. Tests completed, death defeated.

The room was filled with machines and I was wired up to one of them, an EKG that crowded for a place to deposit all of the paper it spewed, paper covered with rhythmic scribbles that doctors glance at and say Hmm. Cryptic language, true, but I was no stranger in this place. I knew the meaning of every Hmm by its inflection, and so I listened carefully.

At three weeks post-surgery the doctors wanted to know one thing: How’s the heart? And the scribbles never lie. The heart was running like a gazelle.

No sign of rejection.

No sign of incision infection (my chest scar was twelve inches long and it itched fiercely from somewhere deep inside).

No moving or popping breastbone (they had sawed it in half and then glued it back together).

No swelling in the hands or feet.

Even with all of the drugs (those