We first meet Edward as a small child, living with his mother who barely supports them as a prostitute. At age 15, Edward kills her pimp, and finds his stash of money. It is 1917, and armed with the $5000, Edward, in a less than credible session, convinces the pimp’s other girls to join with him and his mother and start a bordello.

Quickly, the business enterprise takes off and, as with most financial successes; excites the envy of others. Edward’s mother dies, his empire is toppled, and he finds himself incarcerated as a juvenile offender until he is 21. While in jail he has an accident with electricity and, in a state of continuum, Satan appears and offers him a way to avenge the wrongs done his mother and friends.

Edward chooses evil, and resides in an elite portion of Hell while undergoing a massive training program. He becomes educated and is granted many mystical powers in preparation for his return to earth. Upon his return, his ability to create chaos and destruction becomes an obsession that he chronicles in a journal of his life, together with his future plans. He later loses the journal in an explosion in Italy. He fears his ability to function will be impeded if someone discovers and translates his journal entries -- entries that include future plans he has encrypted in a series of astrological charts.

Teri Ellis is the granddaughter of a famous astrologer, seer, and chart reader from Barbados, who has passed her knowledge on to Teri. Before dying, Teri’s grandmother warned her that a time would come when people will lose faith in God and become easily seduced by wickedness, and the forces of evil will take over the earth. When this happens, Teri will be faced with a monumental task.

Years pass, and Teri, now living in New York City, meets Professor Aaron Jacobs. A relationship develops, but Teri is afraid to let it progress too far because of fears relating to her grandmother’s prophecy. On her 41st birthday, Aaron gives her an engagement ring and an antique astrology book he has purchased at an auction of an Italian landowner’s estate. Teri’s brother also has a gift for her from her grandmother -- a framed hologram of Granny Williams, through which her spirit can watch over Teri.

Now issue is joined, good versus evil, and each side has their respective mentors. Edward is driven to regain possession of his book before Teri can translate and interpret his warped future plans.

The basic concept of good v. evil is such a recurrent theme in fiction that we tend to take it for granted. But Sealy, by dramatically posing the forces against each other, borrowing bits from Faust and others, orchestrates the battle with a fresh originality. Unfortunately, the dialogue is sometimes pedestrian and unconvincing, and is further weakened by the frequent use of clichés -- all of which diminishes the cleverness evident in the plot structure.

In The Eighth House, Sealy presents characters who are white, black, Protestant and Jewish. It is a tribute to her sensitivity that she handles characters with such different backgrounds so dispassionately, equally balancing positions in a novel that is a supernatural suspense story steeped in religion.

--Thea Davis