"If you thought you knew all about Elvis, prepare to be astonished."Diane Wolkstein, Author of "The First Love Stories: From Isis and Osiris to Tristan and Iseult" and Contributing Editor to Parabola"There is something wholly original, almost magical about 'My Summer With Elvis'"Editor, Scribner Publishing Harth’s memoir, My Summer With Elvis—Spiritual Teachings From The King, repeatedly surprises as it chronicles this unlikely romance—she’s nearly fifty and he’s dead. On a sultry Sunday early in June, Willow Harth’s love affair with Elvis begins. As she sits silently in Quaker meeting, Elvis in all his spangled glory appears. Despite her resistance, in his ecstatic embrace the earth moves and the heavens speak. Elvis seems an unlikely teacher, but as he reaches out his hand to her, she reaches back. Dancing with Elvis in their nightly trysts, she finds a rapture that permeates each waking moment. He becomes her constant inner companion whether she’s spending long hours reading every Elvis book she can find, or introducing her skeptical friends to “Elvis yoga.” Even when the sleazy details of Elvis’s life gradually overwhelm her delight, love ripens into compassion. Through Elvis, she discovers both a spiritual path where body and soul meet and greet, and the love that love’s one’s neighbor as oneself. “Elvis,” she writes, “puts Saturday night and Sunday morning in the same time zone.” For readers of Anne Lamott and Elizabeth Gilbert, and for Elvis fans everywhere. Willow Harth is an artist and therapist living in Madison, Wisconsin.Cover photo taken by Paul ThoresenCover designed by Willow Harth with computer graphics by Marcia Schenkel
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