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The first chapter opens with a
shock; the protagonist,
Kirk Adams, who immediately draws the reader into
his
first-person account, commits
murder in an angry
drug-induced stupor. The unforgivable
sin has been
committed. As the murderer flees from the scene of the
crime, he loses control of his
car and plunges into a
ravine. When he awakens, he finds that he
is no longer
in California; he is in Ata, an island inhabited by simple,
wise natives who live by the dictates of their dreams.
In
fact, Kirk soon learns that his arrival had been
foreseen
in a dream.
The author portrays Kirk
as a modern barbarian in the
presence of simple wisdom. Resisting all efforts to heal
his ailing spirit, the recalcitrant protagonist
violates the
island's principles, and nearly brings the people
to their
knees. Yet his love for
a woman and his desire to
understand her aloofness, awakens an
interest in their
way of life and in his troubling dreams.
The message of
The Comforter is that forgiveness
for any act is possible, and that the
dream is the arena
for such healing. Yet the
author does not permit an
unbelievable transformation; on
the contrary, Kirk
meets each revealing dream, each
stage of the healing
process with defiance. Yet in
the end he succeeds in
confronting his past through an act
of self-surrender.
And in this act the Comforter, the Light, comes
to him
for the first time.
Dorothy Bryant weaves into The
Comforter a number
of intriguing tools which the reader may use in personal
or group dream work. Thus although The
Comforter is
primarily a mystical fantasy,
it also provides
an
eminently practical approach to dreams.
Gregory Scott Sparrow
COMmunication. A monthly
newsletter published
by Well Being: A Network for Spiritual
Journeyors.
$6 quarterly. Sample copy sent on request.
PO Box
887, San Anselmo, California 94960.
102
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