Book review of All of Us Together in the End by Matthew Vollmer

The lights began shortly after Matthew Vollmer’s mom died. It was the fall of 2019, and Vollmer’s father now lived alone, sleeping in the identical mattress the place his spouse of a long time had launched her remaining breath. He had spent 10 years caring for her as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s illnesses slowly took their toll. Now Vollmer, his sister, their respective households and their father had been studying to dwell with out their mom’s buoyant laughter. 

So it was comprehensible when associates and acquaintances provided a fast clarification for the look of mysterious lights close to the elder Mr. Vollmer’s rural North Carolina property. They should be Mrs. Vollmer, of course, signaling to her husband from past the grave.

This straightforward reply didn’t sit nicely with Vollmer, who had lengthy wrestled with issues of religion after leaving the Seventh-day Adventist Church in faculty. The different members of his household had been nonetheless Adventists, and this well-meaning clarification didn’t align with their beliefs both. Adventists consider that after you die, you’re useless till Christ returns and resurrects the useless. Vollmer’s father even steered to some those who the lights may not have been from his late spouse however from a demonic supply as a substitute.

Vollmer explores these potentialities with open-minded curiosity in All of Us Together in the End. An English professor at Virginia Tech who has beforehand authored brief story and essay collections, Vollmer brings a fiction author’s knack for narrative to this account of his life, vividly recounting household gatherings throughout the COVID-19 lockdown and different tender moments. Likewise, Vollmer’s analytic prowess shines in his analysis into attainable causes for the lights. He turned to an writer of a ghost lights e-book and a shaman, amongst different sources, trying to make sense of not solely this phenomenon but in addition the gap Vollmer’s mom left in the household.

Throughout this journey, Vollmer invitations readers into his world by way of detailed renderings of the locations he’s known as residence. He recollects his childhood home with beautiful element and recounts trying to find the lights exterior his father’s window so powerfully that readers can place themselves in the scene. And as he searches, Vollmer evokes a painfully common expertise: the course of of transferring ahead with a life that doesn’t make sense after a cherished one’s dying.