Weird Steffi is the book I purchased following Kabeto's reading. It focuses on Kabeto's experience at a German boarding school where she had lived many lives. Kabeto described the school as her favorite place in the world and reported that it no longer exists. The title character Steffi is sensitive to the supernatural, and it takes the narrator, Stephanie, awhile to believe in Steffi's abilities and in her own reincarnation. The first section of the book chronicles Steffi's prediction that bodies are buried under a local woodpile. The second tells the story of Steffi's visit to Stephanie's house, where the girls try to prevent the death of Stephanie's sister Erna, which Steffi predicted. The last addresses the loss of Stephanie's boyfriend Willi, who is also sensitive to the supernatural.
I enjoyed the three related but separate narratives, as well as the narrator's gradual development across the three narratives into a person who believes in the supernatural. Because I had met the author and the stories were based on true experiences, the plots of each were more interesting. I would have liked to ask Kabeto what her relationship to the supernatural is now, aside from the reincarnation she mentioned. Is Oregon, like Germany, filled with invisible fairies? I can't see them myself, but I'm sure there are elements of the world that are beyond my sensory experience, and I'm interested in others' experiences of them.
Work Cited
Kabeto, Rita Traut. Weird Steffi. San Jose: Authors Choice P, 2001. Print.
Image Source:
Weird Steffi Cover. amazon.com. n.d. Web. 17 Dec. 2012. <http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Weird%20Steffi>.
