From the Raven to the Dove

    Recently I read a good book. 

   I know I know, you're saying ANOTHER DAMN BOOK REVIEW?! DON'T YOU KNOW WE HATE THESE AND WANT YOU TO WRITE FUNNY SHIT TO MAKE US GIGGLE?!

   Yeah yeah, I'll write jokes later, I'll smash a damn watermelon, put a prop arrow in my head, whatever you want. For the time being, though, I need to talk about something...

   Or rather someone.

   About 36 years ago, I was channel surfing when upon me came a show on USA that I'd seen once or twice before in daytime called The Edge of Night. I hadn't caught the plot or characters before that, I just liked the music theme. Come to early 1986, I finally sit to catch the actual show. It was an array of some really interesting, off-the-wall characters, from psychotic killers to fraudulent actors to obsessed cops...and at the center of a lot of these stories and dialogues was what could be described as an anti-heroine, someone who people rooted for but wasn't necessarily good. 

   Her name was Raven Whitney...actually I would later come to learn she was Raven Alexander Jamison Swift Whitney. She was played by a quite gorgeous woman named Sharon Gabet. I must admit, at 13 I was quite smitten with her just as much as any girl I liked in junior high.

   When the Edge run ended on USA in early 1989, I was quite bummed, though I knew she was on another soap at that point, just not a front-of-the-line role. For the next ten years, all I had was the scant videotapes of whatever I'd recorded. Then in 1999, I found an Edge web page from which I found some people who had more than I had on tape! I bought a few tapes and that kept me going for some time. Then AOL video aired episodes earlier than the USA run and I got an earlier and quite nastier Raven!

   Even later I found a group on Facebook devoted to Edge as well as another person who sold episodes on disc! Admittedly I spent over $300 on these but this show was important to me and I got to relive what I saw decades before, plus stuff I hadn't seen because I caught it months after the run began. Most importantly, in the group was none other than Sharon Gabet herself! She shared much with us about the show, as well as the fact that she had written a book called From the Raven to the Dove (yeah I know, talk about your long preliminaries, Bryan!). It was more about her spiritual and emotional journey as an adult than about her days as a soap star. She was also good enough to answer questions from me in IM personally. You have no idea what that meant to me after all those years.

   It took me a while, but I finally decided I wanted to get this book and read what Sharon had to say, so I asked for it for Christmas. Thankfully my sister-in-law got a copy for me. When I opened the present, I was beyond ecstatic!

   Truly, I felt a surge of energy holding this book before I opened it up. It was like I held a certain expectation of what I would read, even though I truly knew Sharon is just a human being like the rest of us. Then I flipped past the opening title page and what not and got to the actual text.

   What I received through reading this book over the course of a few weeks was an incredible journey, a tale of someone who grew up in a seemingly idyllic 1950s environment. I must admit that as a child of the 70s and early 80s, I shared some of the same memories...mostly the outdoor life, exploration, options of places to go in a time before the virtual world consumed us. Millenials would not likely understand this life, it is so foreign.

    Yet, that was just the opening.

    The ensuing chapters are about her growth and experience as a model, then a nurse in New York City...and a nasty perspective of an abortion clinic in New York City in the mid 1970s...not a pretty scene. 

    Then there is the acting part of her life that would go for over a decade of thrills, excitement, and a sad number of downs that came toward the end. How Sharon describes it is more than what some might consider a midlife crisis, but more about a person looking around herself and wondering suddenly who she is. She is frustrated, angry, and in despair...almost like the acting had gone on for much longer than her years on TV.

    What really got to me in the "meat" of the book was how she saw herself in terms of her relationships with men...as well as with her children. What she was looking for, or what she thought she needed to look for, tended not to pan out in the long run. Anyone can see someone going through a divorce, maybe two divorces,  and say, "Well, they didn't try hard enough to make it work." Sharon goes to great depths to show that we do not always know what our souls truly need or want. Society has a great, almost EVIL, role in telling us what we should do in our relationships, what roles we are destined to play...especially for females. Yet the same goes for men, the sense of tough dominance and authority they need to exhibit in order to fit the role, to be accepted. 

   I have to confess that my vocabulary in terms of spiritual journeys, so-called "mythical" creatures and ideas are many times lost on me as I read Sharon's words...the words "skip a bit, brother" from Monty Python and the Holy Grail hit my brain a few times when it got too deep vocabulary-wise. Yet, those were small parts that just enhanced Sharon's overall message which was always understood at the end of each chapter.

   And then when she talks about her children, I can see the love, the deep connection...and the frustrations that accompany. Sharon has a daughter who is autistic, and her journey from discovering that quality to exploring ways to cope and communicate with her, show that Sharon Rose Gabet is not your average suburban single mom who merely gets her child diagnosed and fights with the school over the IEP for years...no she went BEYOND that and found people and experience to help make connections. There is a part near the end when her daughter says "NO" and means it...I won't tell the story of that, but it showed that those people and experiences had borne fruit.

   Possibly one of the deepest themes (maybe THE DEEPEST)Sharon explores, maybe deeper than relationship dynamics and expectations, is the relationship with God that she has explored...often referring to God as Creator, an accurate name and perhaps more appropriate as a descriptor. It is a deep topic explored throughout the book, from her Catholic upbringing to examining the social norms and expectations of believing and what believing truly means when one digs deep into their soul about their true relationship with "the man upstairs". I related to this theme as I have taken a smaller mental journey of my relationship with God and have come to understand what I see it to be...and have felt it to me more rewarding inside.

   Toward the end, Sharon shares her online and phone reunion and some times with her Edge love Larkin Malloy. We as fans were devastated when he left us over 5 years ago, but her take was especially emotional given their past time together. You can feel the love between them onscreen even though they never got together in real life. One understands that sometimes things are meant...and not meant to be. Our inner energy does not always match with others the way we WANT them to. Yet what they had in their way was more real than probably most marriages I have seen onscreen and real life.

   All I can really say to end this review is that it all started with being a fan...and I still am. I can watch the adventures of Raven and Sky on The Edge of Night over and over on disc and Youtube and never get tired of it. Yet, by the end of the book, I feel empowered to dig even more deeply into myself to unravel a few knots and see where I end up. It could be scary, it could be exhilarating...possibly both simultaneously. 

   Thank you, Sharon, for giving me probably one of the most meaningful reads I have ever experienced.