Many area residents know Shirley Enebrad through her involvement with the West Seattle Hi-Yu organization and its court of young queens and princesses. Soon they may also know Shirley as the mother of her little prince, Cory, the subject of her newly released book, “Over the Rainbow Bridge.”

Cory, her only son, was diagnosed with leukemia at age 3 and died just after his ninth birthday in 1985. In her 325-page, self-published softcover, Enebrad guides us through her son’s journey. But, unlike the story of the Titanic, Cory’s ship does not seem to sink. Heart breaking, yes, and the reader pulls for the tyke even when all is lost, but Cory does some heavy lifting in many chapters to entice the reader into his joy-filled world.

I.Q. tests placed him in the genius level beginning at age 4, when he was admitted to the University Childhood Development School. According to the book, it was not just reading, writing and arithmetic, but also his uncanny ability to put two and two together to accept and be at peace with his diagnosis of cancer. He reassured his mother, his younger sister Brie and other family members and friends that things would be OK after he died.

“I wrote the book about 10 years ago, but I didn’t like the ending,” said Enebrad, a former private investigator and staff KOMO-TV producer for 14 years who produced the award-winning show Town Meeting. “I waited. The ending came and that was it."

“I promised Cory I’d tell his story,” she said. “He didn’t want others to be afraid of death. He saw a lot of kids at the hospital die, and he wanted me to help other moms.”

Enebrad said statistics show that moms are often left with the burden of caretaking their sick child.

“The first thing they tell you when the crisis comes is 80 to 85 percent of marriages don’t survive this diagnosis,” she said. “I found it was usually the mothers who stayed involved.”

In her book, Enebrad judges Cory’s father harshly and complains that the more trips to the emergency room she and Cory took, the more detached her husband became. They broke up and became another statistic.

“We’d go four months without hearing from my husband," Enebrad said.

Enebrad remarried. She has been with her husband Dr. Steven Geller since 1987 and they have a daughter, Keili.

Geller, a psychologist, has a practice on Oregon St. near the Alaska Junction. One of his specialties includes children's grief issues.

The book explores two facets of Cory's short life here on Earth that seem, well, otherworldly. The first is the ghost in their home.

In her book, Enebrad casually recounts the “translucent green figure" like someone might describe a distant cousin that occupied the house before they moved in. At first her family was cool with the amicable apparition, until it started messing with Cory's toys when they were out.

She promptly hired a Filipino Catholic priest to hang wooden crosses over the bedroom doors and perform a ritual that she claims de-haunted their Lakeridge house. They now live in West Seattle.

“My grandfather was a mixture of Methodist and ‘Hawaiian cowboy’ on the Big Island, which is very rural,” Enebrad said with pride. “I was raised with a mixture of the Bible and Hawaiian beliefs instilled in me by him. He taught me you can’t explain away many things that happen. He told me about the ‘night walkers’ that wander the islands. I figured that was normal.”

She said that because her husband is a psychologist, he is skeptical and “should be from Missouri, the 'Show Me State.'"

“I am well-grounded and hard-headed,” she said. “I was an award-winning television producer, and grew up with five brothers and a longshoreman for a dad.”

The second supernatural facet of Cory explored in depth is his claim that he had prolonged out-of-body experiences the last year and a half of his life. This comforts his mother who believes his “gift” foreshadowed his transcendence from his afflicted physical body to a spiritual home when he passed.

“My friends who know me totally believe in Cory’s experience," Enebrad said. "Others think I am a whackjob. That’s why I put my resume on my website.”

Her resume includes president of Candlelighters Childhood Cancer Foundation of Western Washington from 2002 to 2009, Washington State Team Leader Cure Search National Childhood Cancer Foundation from 2004 to 2009, a National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Emmy for “Cancer Through the Eyes of Kids” in 1992, and of course her work with Hi-Yu.

Famed Swiss-born author Elisabeth Kubler Ross who wrote “On Death & Dying” in 1969 which gave birth to the “Five Stages of Grief” model became a personal admirer of Cory and, according to his mother, did not dismiss his out-of-body experiences.

“I was doing a video project with Elisabeth for medical students at U.W., putting together grief workshop, and she and Cory fell in love with each other,” said Enebrad. “She stayed in my house. She was a kick. She said he was her favorite patient ever. She admired how tuned in he was with his life and body. She talked about him all over the world.”

"Over the Rainbow Bridge" (Book Publishers Network) is available on www.amazon.com or at www.overtherainbowbridge.info.

Enebrad will donate 30% of her book's net proceeds to charity, to be split between Candlelighters of Western WA (the local chapter) and CureSearch.