"At Kovalam beach on India's southwestern shore I plunge into the Arabian Sea, the same soft temperature as the air...Looking shoreward, I see lifeguards gesturing. Since I'm much further than I imagined, I begin a determined swim toward them...The lifeguards continue to blast and gesture, but I'm powerless against the riptide irresistibly sweeping me out to sea. Though my situation appears hopeless, I'm about to undergo the most remarkable and mysterious event of my life...." So begins "The Rope in the Water", the story of Sylvia Fraser's three-month pilgrimage to India in search of "something larger than myself, something deeper, something more." Travelling 12,000 kilometers across deserts and through jungles, Fraser visits sacred sites such as the twilight city of Varanasi on the Ganges, dense with the smoke of hundreds of funeral pyres; north to the glittering Golden Temple of the Sikhs; up Mount Abu where she stays with a Hindu sect called the Brahma Kumaris; south to a Buddhist retreat where she meditates eleven hours a day for ten days while observing a vow of silence; and to the Kovalam beach where her life is saved by a miracle. Fraser brings alive the sense-luscious tapestry of India, from its fluorescent seas of turbans and flowing robes, to the cerulean alleyways and the hot crush of urban bazaars, while exploring Eastern concepts such as "You create your own future" and "Change yourself and you change everything." Humourous and intelligent, "The Rope in the Water" is an uplifting yet earthbound literary odyssey for all those interested in the physical and philosophical worlds beyond their own.
Sylvia Fraser has written six novels, four books of non-fiction, an illustrated children's book, and hundreds of magazine articles, for which she has won numerous awards.
Her book - "My Father's House: a Memoir of Incest and of Healing" - first published in 1987, was credited with breaking the silence on child sexual abuse, till then a largely taboo subject. It was described by The New York Times as having a significance comparable to "The Catcher in the Rye" and "To Kill a Mocking Bird." It was translated into many languages, and became an international bestseller.
Fraser's novels range from the contemporary to the historical. She has expressed her love of travel in "The Rope in the Water: a Pilgrimage to India" and in "The Green Labyrinth: Exploring the Mysteries of the Amazon," both following the theme of spiritual quest. Because of the many meaningful psychic incidents that she has experienced in her life, she wrote "The Quest for the Fourth Monkey: a Thinker's Guide to the Psychic and Spiritual Revolutions" (also published under the title "The Book of Strange") in an attempt to understand these events from a scientific and rational viewpoint, as well as from the intuitive and emotional one.
Most recently, Fraser cowrote "The Energy Cure: Unraveling the Mystery of Hands-On Healing" with scientist and healer Dr. William Bengston ( also published under the title "Chasing the Cure: an Effective Alternative for Curing Cancer and Other Diseases").
Sylvia Fraser lives in Toronto, Canada.
