My Two Cents: GHOST GLASSES by Rikki Goodwin

"Ghost Glasses" by Rikki Goodwin is at times heartwarming or heartbreaking, but always, at its heart, about family. Not just the one we're born with, but the family we make for ourselves, the people in life (and in this case, in the afterlife) who make us feel needed, important, and above all else, remembered.

At the center of the story is Poppy, the ghost of a young woman killed in the 1960s when she is struck by a garbage truck on her way to work. Since that time, she has wandered the streets of Chicago, completely invisible to everyone around her. Not even her own mother realized Poppy's presence, no matter how desperately Poppy tried to be seen or heard. She can still touch objects, move them around, turn things on and off, but to the casual observer, these things go unnoticed or dismissed as coincidence. When the story opens, it's been 60 years since Poppy's untimely demise. Her mother is long-since dead and her childhood home now inhabited by strangers. Poppy had hoped when her mother died, they'd be reunited in the afterlife, but unfortunately, that didn't happen, and she's found herself as she's been all along: alone.

At least, almost. During her lonely wanderings through the city, Poppy encounters other spirits, hideous and terrifying monsters that frighten and chase her. She does her best to avoid them, but one day, a monster manages to follow as she flees across a subway platform and onto a train. The other passengers are oblivious as it stalks the narrow aisles, searching for Poppy -- until Poppy hears one of them scream, a young man who clearly not only sees the monster among them, but Poppy herself.

She tries to catch up to him as he bolts in terror, but is unable to. She becomes determined to find him again, and her search inadvertently leads her into the company of a long-haul truck driver named Buddy, in whose cab she hitches a ride. He's not a bad traveling companion, even though he has no idea she's tagging along, so she sticks with him a while, eventually ending up at his mother's house with him for the holidays. There, she's stunned to meet another ghost: that of Buddy's young daughter Addie, who was killed along with her mother, Buddy's wife, in a car wreck.

Addie is the one who names Poppy, because in the story, ghosts lose their memories over time, a conundrum Poppy has tried to combat in part by carrying a notebook with her, and writing down events and facts from her life to remind herself. Her name, however, was one thing she could never recall, and she's happy to accept the designation Addie picks for her.

As Addie and Poppy grow closer, she learns no one in the girl's family can see or hear her, either. Sometimes Addie says she has break-through moments with her grandmother, much as Poppy has had with Buddy, brief interludes in which they are heard, or glimpsed. These are all only too fleeting, however, and Poppy longs to find a way for them to communicate better with the living.

She realizes her chance when she discovers the man she'd seen on the Chicago subway is a psychic named August Waters. He's a rising internet celebrity who explores haunted places and tries to capture spectral phenomena to share with his viewers. Although it's a risk, Poppy tries to send him an email using Buddy's phone, explaining who she is, who she is with, and asking for August's help. By nothing short of blind luck, August receives this message, and within no time, he has his army of followers on the hunt to track down Poppy, Buddy, and his family.

From there, things get complicated. For one thing, Buddy doesn't believe in ghosts, and when August shows up at his mother's house, livestreaming, he grows angry and defensive. Even when Buddy begins to believe in Poppy's existence, as well as Addie's, the massive amount of attention August brings to his family and their private tragedy only enrages and alienates him further.

Along the way, Poppy discovers a horrifying truth: the things she considered monsters are really spirits like herself and Addie, ones whose memories have completely eroded away. With no sense of identity, belonging, or their pasts, these poor wayward souls are left twisted and deformed by their own loneliness and sorrow into grotesque caricatures of the people they once were. When a furious Buddy rejects Poppy, demanding that she leaves, she finds herself at risk of slipping into a similar state of despair, and of becoming one of the creatures she's so long feared.

Goodwin's narrative style is warm, comfortable, and engaging. The story goes to some pretty dark places, but she knows how to balance it with touches of lightheartedness and humor. She has a gift for descriptions, providing just the right amount of detail at just the right time for the reader to feel completely immersed in her world and characters. The monsters she's imagined are truly terrifying and unique, and it's gut-wrenching to read Poppy's point of view shifting as she slowly devolves into one, her thoughts slipping into morose, hopeless despair, her memories abandoning her one by one. And while the ending isn't exactly happy, it's definitely something hopeful, a promise that, if only for a short time, our lost loved ones can live again when we choose to remember them.

"Ghost Glasses" is available here.