A Certain Slant of Light by Laura Whitcomb

In spite of all the praying and religious talk, there are serious underlying issues. Jenny finds that her household is cold and rigid. His brother is always swearing at him, bringing his girlfriend around, and hits him. The household James now lives in is harsh. Helen is getting more glimpses at her past now that she is in Jenny's body.

James and Helen talk together about their lives, and they discuss memories. Their closeness leads to sexual intimacy, which seems very right to them. James helps her, and the two become even closer. Living in someone else's body has its own challenges, and Helen tries to get used to life as Jenny. If she challenges anything her parents say, she is sent to her room and told to pray. However, her life is regimented and she isn't allowed personal expression. Her parents present the perfect picture, and she is given everything she needs in regards to food, clothes, and housing. Jenny is from a strictly religious family. She enters the body of a girl named Jenny. James and Helen get to know each other, and James helps Helen find a body that she can occupy. He has taken over the body of a boy who wanted to leave his body empty.

He sees her because he, too, is a spirit. Her current host is a teacher, and to Helen's great shock, she realizes that one of his students can see her.

As this book begins, she is on her fifth host, and all of her hosts are involved with literature as poets, writers, and playwrights.

Helen stays with her host until her host dies, and when she feels herself slipping back into the icy clutch of her grave, she latches on to a new host. All she knows is that after she died, she heard a woman reading poetry, grasped onto the woman's skirts, and was pulled out of her grave, unbeknownst to the woman. She isn't certain what she did that kept her from heaven. Helen has been dead for over 100 years, but she doesn't remember much about her life before death. The two bond, and Helen learns there is a lot more to life than what she knows of death. Stuck between life and death, she clings to her hosts and immerses herself in literature until one day she discovers that a student can see her. A Certain Slant of Light by Laura Whitcomb tells the story of a ghost named Helen.