During her time in Elsewhere, Liz made friends, including a girl her own age named Thandie, and a woman named Betty, who turned out to be Liz's own grandmother. Liz fell in love, brought her grandmother together with her former rock-star idol, and found forgiveness in her heart for the driver of the car that killed her. Liz's life, and death, mattered very much to these people Liz met in Elsewhere. The book is divided into three parts that represent three stages of grief: denial, anger and sadness, and acceptance. In Part I: The Nile, Liz struggles to understand what happened to her. She finds herself asea, both literally and figuratively. Nothing makes sense and she cannot believe she is dead: "I am dreaming, she thinks, and any moment, my alarm clock will sound, and I will wake up" (Zevin, p. 19). In Part II: The Book of the Dead, Liz is angry about the things she never got to experience while on Earth, including falling in love and going to college. She realizes she had not appreciated what she had: "The whole time she had been on Earth she hadn't considered herself a particularly happy person. Like many people her age, she had been moody and miserable… in many ways, she had felt that she had...

During the second part of the book, Liz spends considerable time and money watching people from her old, Earthly life through special binoculars. She finds it difficult to begin her new life in Elsewhere.
By Part III: Antique Lands, Liz understands "a human's life is a beautiful mess" (Zevin, p. 240). She understands that everyone will have the opportunity to live many lives, forward and backward, and that one can choose to be happy in them all. One cannot pick the best parts of each life and string them together, however. One must take life, and the people and events that fill it, as it comes.

At the end of Elsewhere, Liz is a baby again. She lived a life forward to the age of nearly sixteen and lived a life backward from sixteen to infancy, learning to appreciate each life as the only life she had. In the beginning of the book, Liz was awash in a sea of misery and fear, but she came to the shore of understanding and peace within herself. She learned it was foolish and futile to wish to be younger or older, and that one should enjoy the now.

Reference

Zevin, G. (2005). Elsewhere. New York: Square Fish.