Editorial Reviews  
Book Description  
Soul searching, communication with the dead, survival--these are the topics I address in my New Age book "Death the Beginning." The title refers both to the death of my position as a film critic in exile from the former Soviet republic, Estonia, and survival of human awareness after bodily death. "Part One "The Path" tells how I, receiving death threats, escaped from Soviet-occupied Estonia without language, money or friends waiting to help. My mounting problems of immigration launched my search for answers which led to the spiritual growth, sessions with mediums like James Van Praagh, psychics, and the elicitation of my own channel of communication with the spirit world. 

Part Two "The Conversation" contains direct dialog with the next world. It celebrates our imagination and gives marvelous pictures of spirits' dwelling places in the next world. Spirit people tell us in their own words about their death experiences, their reunions, work, creativity in the next world, also about limbo condition, the rescue of stuck souls. They validate the need for the positive attitude toward difficulties we experience on earth and much more. 

It is a sincere book of hope dedicated to those who have to start their life all over again, whatever the reason maybe--divorce, the death of spouse, layoff, loss of career, early retirement, bankruptcy, sickness, catastrophe, loss of home, exile--whatever causes our brush with destiny. 

Synopsis  
One day the author, a film critic, found herself and her adopted son, a student, on a political hit list in the former Soviet Union. Her escape to America and struggles to begin a new life led to her search for spirituality, spontaneous past-life recollections and communication with the spirit world. In Part One of the New Age book "Death the Beginning," the author tells the thrilling story of her escape. The mounting problems of life in exile launched the author's search for answers. She met the American psychics and mediums James Van Praagh and Brian E. Hurst, which led to the elicitation of her own channel of spirit communication. 

Part Two, "The Conversations," contains direct dialogue with the spirit world. It gives pictures of paradise (higher worlds) and hell (lower worlds) and the rescue of "stuck" souls. The spirit people tell us about their death experiences, their reunions, work, creativity in the next world, and worries for the loved ones they left behind on earth. They tell about the progress of the next world: our destiny is not written in stone, we can better our future both on earth and in heaven. 

From the Author  
My brush with destiny taught me many valuable lessons about love, dedication and truthfulness, but most importantly, about our instinctual and very basic fear of death. When in Estonia, in the course of unholy political games at the end of perestroika, I was exposed to death threats, including threats to kill my adopted son before my eyes. I had to face that fear as a fact of life. I escaped, but life in exile was not easy either. Help came from heaven. Messages from the next world were shocking but they taught me how to deal with fear and gave new meaning to my life. As Judy Foster's heroine in Contact, I can prove nothing but I can share my shocking discovery that death is not the end, but rather a new beginning. It changed everything for me; it will change everything for you. 

About the Author  
My name is Tatiana Elmanovich, I was born 08.02.34 in Paide, Estonia. My parents stem from the Russian emigrants who left Russia after revolution. In early 1960 I started to write film reviews. Since late 1970's to the day of my escape in 1989 I was on the Board of the Estonian Union of Filmmakers. In 1978 I graduated at VGIK (All Soviet Film Institute in Moscow) as "Candidate of Art Sciences." (This degree corresponds to Ph D in the United States. In the Soviet Union the access to the "Candidate" degree had to be earned by certain number of publications on the subject, in my case--the Estonian Television) 

Since 1983 to 1989 I worked in the Estonian Academy of Sciences as film researcher. In Estonia I reviewed films and published film articles on daily bases. I really have never counted the exact number of my published articles, I suppose there were hundreds of them. Since 1995 I resumed publishing articles about the American films in Estonian media and was accepted as a member of MPAA--Motion Picture Association of America. 

In 1995 and 1996 I revisited Estonia twice and enjoyed full attention of the media. But I felt that as a non-Estonian, I still cannot return home. Today I consider myself an independent, free-lance film critic. 

This book is my first book in English, financed by my adopted son, Vladimir Elmanovich, AIA. Together we escaped from Estonia. In 1997 he graduated as an American architect. On the way to this graduation I kept odd jobs to help him. When, after graduation, Vladimir, received 10 job offers in two weeks, he said he wanted to thank me. As a thank you, he designed the cover, and encouraged me to move on with my manuscript. I enrolled with the PMA, and in their first Newsletter I found Virginia Iorio, an editor. We worked three months on the manuscript, and first edition, 3,000 copies, were printed by McNaughton and Gunn. 

This year I was approached by the European Department of radio station "Voice of America" in Washington, and time to time they order the "critic's corner" stories for their programs in Estonian language, aired from America to Estonia. 

My legal status. The number of my "green card" is A-029199957, and I am waiting the sworn-in procedure to become a U.S. citizen. My relations to the spiritual world. In the Soviet Union we experienced limitations of the official materialist philosophy and developed deep and sincere interest toward forbidden spirituality. Since the 1970s I had studied and practiced astrology, quite forbidden activity in the old Soviet Union, the land of Marxism. In the United States, in my most hardest moments, many American psychics helped me almost for free considering me a psychic person as well. In a sense, my book is a tribute to those sincere and wonderful people.