In my ongoing quest to read the books that inspired ABC series that I have watched, I read The Returned by Jason Mott, which is the basis for Resurrection. Mott’s words are so beautiful and evocative that even though it is not a scary book, one phrase stirred up a longstanding fear and caused a bad dream the first day that I started to read it. I finished it in two. If you’re looking for zombies, keep moving. The Returned is a beautiful and reflective meditation on the acceptance of loss, simple transitory joys of life and a plea to abandon false divisions among people. The Returned is definitely better than the show, Resurrection, but the show is more geared towards uncovering the mystery of why the dead are returning so if you’re looking for answers to why the dead are returning, don’t go to the source material. I prefer the book because the people don’t feel like they were plucked from a soap opera with a dash of sci-fi to add an additional graphic to the viewing audience. The Returned seems to have more spiritually in common with the movie, Les Revenants, a French movie, which is the basis for a French series with the same title. I know that Mott’s inspiration comes from his personal struggle with the death of a loved one, and he has never seen the movie, but the similarity in the plot and heart of the creators shows that Stephen King in Lisey’s Story is right. We all drink from the same pool. Mott’s strong suit is not the progression of the external plot as opposed to each character’s inner journey. It felt like he was looking for a traditional denouement-a way to pull it all together at the end. I would have been happy just reading about the daily adjustments during ordinary encounters between the Returned and the Living. An important, but not a central character seems to be Jason Mott’s fictional self. When Mott is ready to focus his entire book on his fictional self, I have a feeling the literary power unleashed will be able to power entire countries and will be the literary equivalent of Passing Strange. I look forward to his future work.