Book Review
Lois E Wilkins PhD APRN
My review offers a depth‑psychological exploration of Sandra Schumm’s novel The Mermaid Necklace, focusing particularly on the theme of generational healing. The novel is available through Lulu, this initial review is based on my reading and experiencing of it through Jungian, archetypal, and transgenerational lens.
The mermaid necklace functions as a symbolic carrier of ancestral memory and psychic inheritance. Discovered after the death of the protagonist’s mother, it represents a threshold object that connects Manon Perrault with her lineage reaching back to her eighth great‑grandmother. In Jungian terms, such an object emerges as an archetypal mediator between the conscious self and the unconscious depths of ancestral memory. The mermaid motif intensifies this symbolism, representing liminality, the oceanic unconscious, and the feminine anima.
The mother’s death serves as the narrative’s inciting or catalytic event and psychic rupture. In depth‑psychological terms, the loss of a parent dismantles the containing structure of the familial psyche and allows unintegrated ancestral material to surface. The timing of the necklace’s appearance immediately after the mother’s death suggests that it carries secrets, silences, or unspoken histories the mother held. The protagonist is compelled to confront the psychic tasks her mother left unresolved, enacting the transgenerational process of grief and inheritance.
The novel can be read as dramatizing the psychological processes of generational healing as it spans through the literary technique of time travel between February 1667 and August 2022.
These psychological processes include:
1. Repetition and haunting: ancestral wounds or secrets re‑appear in descendants unless consciously integrated.
2. Silence and voice: the mermaid lineage evokes feminine histories that were suppressed, requiring re‑voicing.
3. Shadow confrontation: the protagonist must face disowned or painful material passed down through the maternal line.
4. Integration: healing emerges not by rejecting the ancestral inheritance but by assimilating its gifts and wounds.
5. Reparation and blessing: transformation allows the necklace to become a symbol of renewed continuity rather than burden.
As with many depth‑narratives, the story suggests a descent into the depths—both literal (sea, mermaid imagery) and psychological (ancestral memory). Such a descent often brings temptation toward dissolution or drowning, yet it also holds the potential for profound transformation. Through symbolic encounters with her lineage via time travel, the protagonist is able to engage in dialogue with the past. Emergence from this descent is marked not by closure, but by carrying the ancestral inheritance consciously and differently.
A depth‑psychological review also raises cautions. There is a risk of romanticizing the ancestral past or resolving generational trauma too neatly. Authentic healing is often partial, ambiguous, and ongoing. To remain psychologically credible, the narrative must acknowledge the complexity of ancestral wounds, the messiness of grief, and the continuing presence of unresolved voices. Which aggressively occurs through Manon’s journey’s back and forth through time at moments of birth for Marie which supports the theme of her desire to have a child.
The Mermaid Necklace contributes to the growing body of depth‑psychological narratives exploring intergenerational healing. Its focus on a maternal lineage, mediated through the mermaid symbol, offers readers a mythic grammar for understanding their own inherited wounds. By positioning the protagonist in dialogue with her distant ancestry, Schumm’s novel models the individuation task of reconciling the past with the present self and passing forward a reconfigured legacy.