Almost one in every five near-death experiences (NDEs) is not a visit to heaven. Some are marked by alarm, emptiness, threat, guilt, or even the terror of hell or psychosis. How to understand them? Here is a book that gives readers more to go on than old wives' tales and medieval theological images.

Dancing Past the Dark is a comprehensive overview of near-death experiences in general and disturbing NDEs in particular, presented by an author who knows her topic both from the inside, as one who had a reality-shattering NDE, and from her role as administrator and participant in the early decades of near-death research.

Nancy Evans Bush, MA, President Emerita of the International Association for Near-Death Studies, brings ways of thinking about death, dying, and suffering that will be new to many readers.

All NDEs, she says, even the most painful, have astonishing potential to enrich and clarify life here and now. She remains straightforward about the profound difficulty in this type of NDE and knows first-hand the pressing need for information:

• What do they mean?
• Are they real?
• What does science say, or religion?
• NDEs change lives, but to what extent can they be believed?

She presents such research findings as exist about these NDEs and explains why the study data are so sparse. She interweaves thoughtful scholarship, common questions, conventional wisdom, and anecdotal bits from the early years of near-death studies. From reporting data she moves on to opinion, including the diversity and perpetual changing of ideas about an afterlife. She looks at the impact and range of cultural influences and religion. She devotes a chapter to approaches to recovery following such a PTSD-promoting experience. An appendix is made up of first-person accounts of deeply distressing NDEs.

The book covers a lot of ground, yet is "engagingly written," as one reviewer said. It is not about Evans Bush or her NDE, though she details her own experience; rather, it is a fact-filled overview of the struggle for understanding.

Overall, the book presents a compelling case that to see these events only as messages about death or an afterlife is largely to miss their point.

Author Anne Rice (Interview with the Vampire) posted to her blog readers about Dancing Past the Dark: "I want to once again draw your attention to this brilliant book. Put aside whatever you think you know about NDEs and read this...I cannot reccoment it enough."