100 Books Like The Orpheus Project

This was by far the most essential book in supporting my healing. Reading it at age 45, eight years into my recovery, so many times Herman described the exact thing I was either going through or had to go through to recover.

Explaining that being abused in a family was like being a prisoner of war blew my mind. Like a POW, seven-year-old me couldn’t escape. She helped explain so much of my trauma, my reactions, and my struggle and gave me a mountain of hope to climb!

This book tells the heartbreaking story of the life Jessica faced at a time when the adults around her should have kept her safe.

Her life experiences of abuse are horrendous. The physical and sexual abuse she suffered in her childhood and teenage years and the many missed opportunities for professionals and other adults to protect her is appalling. I can identify personally with some of what she shares and am wounded to my core by what happened to her, and by the light sentence given to the perpetrator who at the time of abusing Jessica was on the sex offenders register!

Jessica’s story brings the spotlight on how our society continues to let children down. I met Jessica recently at a Literary Event and she is an incredibly courageous young woman who is using her experience to support other survivors bringing a fresh voice to the cause. 

In this well-written memoir, Peter talks about his life where abuse was commonplace and why he set up a National Charity (NAPAC) to address a significant gap in support for adults abused in childhood.

Through his efforts he earned an important media platform, was an international voice for survivors, and had a one-to-one meeting with the Pope. Everything changed when he was falsely accused and then silenced by powerful media which adds a dimension that could have destroyed a less resilient person. I know because he is my partner and we have shared our lives working for the survivor cause for 27 years.

He talks of me as a source of strength praising me as his wife several times and gives my book a glowing mention! Good enough reason for me to love and recommend his book but not why I do. It is because he finally found the courage… show more.

Prepare yourself for reading this book, it's soul-destroying and gut-wrenching. I felt nauseous as I read accounts of the repeated abuse and torture of Jen and other children, their vulnerability compounded by individual and institutional racism. I personally know of unthinkable cruelty in childhood, but Jen’s story is on another level. 

Holding little back she takes her readers in to the cesspit of an environment with human cruelty only usually read about in history books and yes, these despicable actions are inflicted by humans. I chose Dehumanisation because Jen’s story is one that people need to read, be shocked into understanding the risks to our children and the long-lasting and devastating impact abuse has.

Don’t be fooled into thinking ‘things are different now’. The different systems in society and legislation for safeguarding and discrimination implemented over the years haven’t stopped it from happening.

I’ve been a devotee of Robertson Davies since my early twenties, when my alternately terrifying and delightful supervisor at the Pacific Lumber Company recommended Fifth Business to me. While all of Davies’s mature novels (the Deptford trilogy and the Cornish trilogy, as well as The Cunning Man) have commonalities with my own novel in their explorations of creativity and the psyche, here I’m recommending The Lyre of Orpheus. Why? It tells the simultaneously comic and deep story of a group of foundation directors who find themselves sponsoring and even helping script an opera begun by E.T.A. Hoffmann, now to be completed by their protégé, a brilliant but obnoxious and somewhat gender-ambiguous young composer. Davies’s account of the opera’s genesis and production helped me create my characters’ own theater piece.

This book re-tells the myth of Orpheus from the perspective of his wife, Eurydice, who struggles to decide whether she wants her husband to rescue her and bring her back to the world of the living or if she'd actually prefer to stay in the Underworld with her dead loved ones.

Since I lost my family, I've spent a lot of time pondering on what happens after you die. I still don't know what I believe, but this play fired my imagination in a way nothing else has: what if being in the land of the dead is okay and actually better than being alive? Would we be less scared of death if being dead turned out to be actually pretty great?

In the words of the writer herself, "this is an adult fairy tale about rivers, time, and the mystery of love." I have never read anything like this little gem of a book that immerses you in the natural world to such an extent, I felt like I became half-aquatic during the reading of it. It made me want to run away and live in the Tasmanian wilderness by a river, but then again, I’m not half woman, half fish, like the protagonist of the book. A strange and wonderful read.

This is the most comprehensive book on Native American afterlife beliefs ever written.

What makes it especially interesting is that the author focuses on myths and legends of afterlife journeys – what he called “Orpheus myths.” He looks at them from many perspectives – historical and cultural – but most importantly experiential.

Writing almost 20 years before the popularization of near-death experiences in the Western world, Hultkrantz identified NDEs as a different type of experience from dreams or shamanic visions – and found that indigenous people did, too.

He also suggested that such experiences contributed to afterlife beliefs – that is, that they weren’t simply culturally created “stories” or hallucinations. Readable and entertaining as well as scholarly, it’s wonderful that this book is back in print after languishing in obscurity for decades!

Sometimes a book makes its way into your hands at exactly the right moment, which was the case for me with Angel Behind the Rocking Chair.

I read this book during my twin pregnancy after receiving a heartbreaking prenatal diagnosis for my son. I knew I might lose him, but this book prepared me for the possibility of raising a child with significant disability. Through Pam Vredevelt’s story of giving birth to a son with Down syndrome, I learned that there can be incredible beauty in a situation that at first seems tragic.

The lessons she learned as she leaned into her faith inspired me to adopt a hopeful perspective and recognize that God can use even the greatest adversity for good.

This is a wonderful story whose main character has Down’s Syndrome, but it’s not a book about a child with Down’s Syndrome. The focus instead is on Adam’s kindness, his helpfulness, his positive attitude, and his community’s willingness to value him as a respected member. I absolutely love the sense of community inclusion found in this story.