title: This Body: A Novel of Reincarnation
author:  Laurel Doud 
description: "A compassionate first nove....This Body approaches the uncertainties of life from an angle skewed just enough to give us a glimpse into something we hadn't seen before".
zlib_text: 
  
  
  
  
  
  ![cover](resources/_cover_.jpg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
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  # Java Head
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### Joseph Hergesheimer
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### I
  
  
  
  
  
  VERY LATE indeed in May, but early in the morning, Laurel Ammidon lay in bed
  considering two widely different aspects of chairs. The day before she had
  been eleven, and the comparative maturity of that age had filled her with a
  moving disdain for certain fanciful thoughts which had given her extreme youth
  a decidedly novel if not an actually adventurous setting. Until yesterday,
  almost, she had regarded the various chairs of the house as beings endowed
  with life and character; she had held conversations with some, and, with a
  careless exterior not warranted by an inner dread, avoided others in gloomy
  dusks. All this, now, she contemptuously discarded. Chairs were--chairs,
  things to sit on, wood and stuffed cushions.
  
  
  
  
  
    
  
  
  Yet she was slightly melancholy at losing such a satisfactory lot of reliable
  familiars: unlike older people, victims of the most disconcer