To Death and Back -- A Powerful New Poetry Collection of Discovery and Renewal

LAKEVIEW, Ore., March 2, 2005 (PRIMEZONE) -- John Berutti lived, died, and returned from death. This opened his eyes to a whole new world of human experience that rendered his life forever changed. His new poetry collection, The Lifted Veil, chronicles his extraordinary journey through life, death, and back.

Arranged thematically rather than chronologically, The Lifted Veil comprises a dark and ultimately enlightening spiritual journey of discovery, recognition, and renewal. Berutti's core poetry describes his personal encounter with death through two major open-heart surgeries in which he died clinically, and now recalls his subjective experience of those events. In other poems, Berutti explores the nature of relationships, the political world, and ultimately the deep roots of life through the spiritual lens developed in his close encounter with death and the renewal of his faith. Berutti's approach to these topics is candid, vivid and powerful.

About the Author

John Berutti marches to a different drum-his own. As James Houston has said, "Berutti is a renegade and a kind of prophet. Possessed with a sensitive and penetrating mind, he looks around edges and corners of things to point toward the truth of what is behind what we think we see or are told to see."

Berutti was born and raised in Santa Cruz, California. After serving in World War II, he earned his doctorate degree from Stanford University. He later taught history and anthropology at several colleges. Berutti lives with his wife, Susan, on their cattle ranch in Lakeview, Oregon.

                The Lifted Veil * By John Berutti
               Publication Date: November 22, 2004
        Trade Paperback; $20.99; 119 pages; 1-4134-5500-X
         Cloth Hardback; $30.99; 119 pages; 1-4134-5501-8

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