Bill VanPatten’s engaging novel, The Waiting Dead, is a contemporary ghost story about two dead characters—Guy, a 50-year-old man, and Torrance, a 12-year-old boy—called back to Earth from the afterlife.

When Guy finds himself suddenly naked in a Chicago park, all he knows is that an ex-partner from his past has called on him for help and, with only a brief list of rules and policies to help him, Guy must find the man and assist him if he can.

Guy has spent the 25 years since he died, almost entirely alone in a kind of limbo. The world he’s called back to has changed in many ways, but happily he’s a quick study. He acquires clothing, enjoys his first meal in decades, and meets up with Torrance, a boy on a similar quest. The two strike up a tentative friendship, agreeing to navigate their return to the world of the living together.

The set-up here is well-conceived and Guy and Torrance’s adventures move quickly, helped along by sharp dialogue and the pair’s creative ways of managing modern life without the benefit of credit cards or ID. Beneath the banter, however, there’s much they don’t know about each other. As a gay man who has never had children, Guy is unsure how much to share about his past life with Torrance, and it’s plain to him that Torrance’s personal history is painful, and his death was most likely a violent one.

Heartfelt, but also humorous, the novel touches on some darker themes, including alcoholism, sexual violence, and bullying. The developing father/son relationship between Guy and Torrance unfolds simply—perhaps over-simplistically, given the trauma of Torrance’s short life—but readers will root for them, as both characters confront their pasts and contrive to find a future, back in the afterlife, that benefits them both.

Also available as an ebook.