Book Review Friday: Twenty-Four Shadows

In her eye-opening and heartrending fourth novel, Twenty-Four Shadows, award-winning author Tanya J. Peterson, MS, NCC takes us inside the anguished mind of Isaac Bittman—an average family man whose mysterious and progressively-violent mood swings, many of which he cannot remember, begin to unravel the lives of those closest to him.

After a series of bizarre encounters, including losing his job and waking up half-dead in the wilds of Idaho, he begins treatment at a revolutionary mental health facility, where the childhood trauma he’s repressed for decades leads to revelations that his personality has splintered into twenty-four shadows, or “alters.” 

The novel intricately weaves together Isaac’s internal angst and his wife’s and best friend’s struggles to retain both a private and public semblance of normalcy.

 “Twenty-Four Shadows takes the facts of dissociative identity disorder (DID) and weaves them into the humanity of someone living with this frightening illness,” says Peterson. 

“My goal was to provide a book that informs and entertains readers with characters that are relatable, sympathetic – even lovable - and shows, rather than preaches, both their struggles and hopes.”

Twenty-Four Shadows offers a unique exploration into many themes, including:

• Humanizing the often misunderstood and frightening mental illness – dissociative identity disorder (DID)
• A realistic portrayal of people with DID and the difficulty these people suffer in daily situations that most people take for granted as simple
• How to help repair the disconnect between understanding mental illness, and understanding and accepting the person behind the illness
• Recognizing that the person is not their mental illness

Stark and realistically rendered, Twenty-Four Shadows delves into the thought processes and erratic habits of a regular man dealing with life-altering mental illness, providing an empathetic, insightful glimpse into a misunderstood and often-stereotyped condition.

A perfect piece of literature! Read this look into the mind.