Book Description
Is it possible that the mind and the brain are distinct and separable? Can consciousness survive death and link up with another physical body?
1973—Charlie Miller, a junior high school kid from Queens, just back from the Knicks-Celtics game six of the 1973 Conference final, exits a subway train. He sees a wounded cop in the subway tunnel, helps him, and then is pushed under an oncoming train.
1993—Toddler Sonny Ray Jackson is suffering from terrible nightmares; when conventional medicine offers no answers or help, his parents begin to explore other explanations—including the outlandish notion of past life visions.
2016—After infiltrating a drug cartel as an undercover detective, Sonny Ray is exposed and shot by a cartel member, falling into the Hudson River. Saved by two fishermen and an emergency operation, Sonny Ray tells FBI agent Tina Weber that, while he was clinically dead for several minutes, his recurring childhood dream resurfaced and he recognized a cop who had pushed his previous self under the train, realizing that it was the current NYC chief of detectives, Leonard Duke, his current boss.
Recovered from his chest wound, Sonny Ray turns to his ex-girlfriend, Attorney Geena De Luca, to try and help him indict Duke for the forty-year-old murder of a white teenager—his previous self in a past life. Deputy District Attorney Indiana Hicks agrees to investigate Sonny Ray’s allegations and brings Duke in front of Judge Paula Quinn, who, after much debate, decides to indict Leo Duke for the murder of Charlie Miller forty years before.
The media stirs up a frenzy as it becomes apparent that Duke will be brought to trial, and the case becomes a world focus, with opinions split, the Church keeping a low profile, and jury selection proving difficult.
The theory of reincarnation is put to the test in a court of law. The testimonies for the prosecution all point to Sonny Ray’s recurring nightmares as proof of his past life as Charlie Miller, but Duke’s attorney, Gilbert Marsh, lines up witnesses who unequivocally dismiss the theory of reincarnation, rejecting any claims that the mind and brain are distinct and separable or that consciousness might survive death and can link up with another physical body.
After weeks of deliberations, the jury hands in a verdict that is spread worldwide by the media in a matter of moments.
Can consciousness survive death and link up with another physical body? Does reincarnation exist? Is there life after death?