"I've handled ghosts in a way that I can believe, " Kate Wilhelm says of this book. "I believe that we are all haunted, thay we harbor within ourselves many ghosts... And I wonder as ancient cultures did, if Earth itself is indrrd alive and if we are temporary gatherers and custodians, during our brief lives."

These two ideas have merged to create the many-dimensioned clash between father and children in A Sense of Shadow.

John Daniel Culbertson has lived like a king, ruling over his thousands of productive acres in an Oregon valley and dominating his several wives and his four children. Now he is dying, and his four grown children are summoned home to hear about the strange and ominous method he worked out for choosing his heir. The despotic old man has bent his doctor and his lawyer to his will, and his plans involve a research psychologist who has some original theories about brain waves.

Despite the anguished resistance of the youngest son, Lucas, and his wife, Ginny, Culbertson wields his absolute power over his children for one last time. Or will he be able to extend his power beyond life?