I recently finished reading a book called “Hawley Book of the Dead” by Chrysler Szarlan. Over the first few pages, the first person narrator foreshadowed the death of her husband at least six different ways. It wasn’t subtle, she came right out and said, “On the day I killed my husband –” in the first or second line of the book, but each instance revealed a different nuance to the concept that her husband would end up dead in chapter one and that the rest of the story would take off from there.

Foreshadowing is a device that must be handled with care. If you say the wrong thing, you can put a reader off right away. Personally, I do not like to be told what is coming, but Chrysler Szarlan definitely did her foreshadowing right. Her first mention of the impending death gave me enough pause to wonder what kind…