Famous Last Words

In Famous Last Words, unresolved guilt is a destructive force that torments the protagonist psychologically, isolating her from healing and connection. As a work of speculative fiction, the novel embodies Willa Cresky’s emotional experience in supernatural form, with ghosts representing the guilt she carries and offering her a chance at resolution. Willa’s journey suggests that freedom from the ghosts of the past, whether literal or metaphorical, can only be achieved by confronting painful truths and forgiving oneself.

Willa’s guilt over her father’s death manifests as a haunting that brings her inner pain into the open. She performs a daily ritual with a candle and ring, a desperate attempt to contact her father and apologize because, in her mind, she “killed him” (11). This self-imposed penance is physically and mentally taxing, consistently triggering a “pounding insta-headache” and intensifying her supernatural experiences (8). The paranormal activity in her new home, including visions of the Hollywood Killer’s victims, reflects her profound guilt and offers her a chance to process her emotions through action. Though she never makes direct content with her father, he does pass her a message through psychic Leyta Fitzgeorge: “[L]ook for a shepherd” (125). One such shepherd is her friend