Valerie Dziengiel and her husband, Walter, were inseparable for decades, until he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.

The couple had created Dziengiel Custom Builders in Bozrah, where she served as office manager and business partner. But in 2012, they had to close the business because of Walter’s decline in motor skills, and three years later he died, leaving Valerie in despair.

Yet the trying times weren’t over for the next few years; her daughter was diagnosed with breast cancer, and her mother died in 2017. Then, in the fall of that same year, she was rear-ended at a stop light on the way to church, leaving her with physical issues.

Seeking spiritual guidance, she turned to God. It took three days for her prayers to be answered, but not by God. The voice that was lingering in her head seemed too familiar; it was Walter’s voice, telling her to write and to publish a book.

She immediately got to work that night when she awoke, taking nearly three and a half years to write and complete her book, “Alone in the Darkness; In Search of Hope.”

“Becoming a writer was never a life-long ambition of mine,” she said. “Since my book was published, a few women have enthusiastically divulged to me that they, too, had seen an apparition of their loved one.”

Her self-published book came out in January. Now, she is fully recovered and better than ever.

Writing the book helped her recover from the car accident, she said, reconnecting parts of her brain that she struggled with. This was the first time she had felt encouragement; it was a new beginning for her with the help of her husband’s guidance within her dreams.

Valerie, 70, was brave enough to write a book about her encounters with the spiritual world while being an active Catholic church member. Her inspiring story may challenge the idea of an afterlife here on earth, but it also allows the reader to relate and heal from the grieving process.

Those who are grieving the loss of a loved one will get the most out of it, or those who experience spirits and apparitions.

The book posits that there is an afterlife. When people pass away, they don’t always choose to go to heaven or hell; they decide to stay with their significant other as a spirit — she’s seen and heard her husband multiple times since his passing.

Spiritual afterlife on earth exists, she said, there just happens to be very few people who can see spirits.

This book was a new chapter in her life, living for herself and her passions.

Local people can find the book on Amazon, at Preston Public library and at Barnes & Noble bookstores.

Chantel M. Bailey is a Times intern from Mitchell College.