What if dreams are more than dreams? This magical realism novel is the first in a trilogy that is historical fiction, love story and spiritual quest. It is about magic and mysticism, faith and initiation. It is about the soul of art. Woven through history is a love story of many parts, remembered and built upon through the centuries. A great love passes on through generations in some undeniable memory in the flesh, and also reappears in new lives from distant places. Mystical love calls to couples throughout time to bring them together again and again. This remembering travels both ways in time, existing in that place beyond time where love lives. There are vague memories, subtle warnings and obscure communications between individuals separated by centuries. Lives weave together throughout more than five hundred years, paralleling contemporary events. Religious intolerance, fear and greed generate the Spanish Inquisition and the religious wars in Europe that reach a decisive moment with the defeat of the Spanish Armada. Ninety-six years earlier, in the same year that Ferdinand and Isabella sent the three ships that discovered the New World, Spain's power had begun to weaken with the expulsion of the Jews and Muslims. The wisdom and skills of the Islamic and Jewish citizens was what had helped make Spain what it was, but fear caused the end of that golden age. These two critical points in history and what follows are the setting for this novel, but other times are connected over many thousands of years. The story opens in Spain in the 15th Century, with Jewish, Islamic and Christian children playing together as innocents without prejudice or fear. Throughout the book, there is an underlying theme of Hope and Faith manifested in mystical ways. This faith lives in ancient Celtic traditions, as well as Jewish, Islamic and Christian forms, both Catholic and Protestant. Truth is truth, no matter what form it chooses to wrap itself inside. Love empowers many characters in various ways and transforms them into their best. The world of nature sometimes comes to their aid in miraculous ways, and enemies who are treated with love become allies. There are no greater mysteries than time and consciousness and the memories that connect us to the whole of our lives and beyond. The déjà vu and vague precognitive experiences that all of us have felt to some degree are the tip of the iceberg of this mystery. The supernatural in our lives is often liberated by powerful emotions like love and fear. We all are familiar with stories about mothers who have sensed when their children are in danger or when a loved one is in crisis. There is an undeniable connection that doesn't fit neatly into our view of everyday physical life. There is a larger world we glimpse as we timidly awake. Editorial Review: Lyrically, hauntingly beautiful....this is storytelling at its best.... -- Phyllis Tickle - Founding editor of the Religion Department of Publishers Weekly and author of dozens of books, including The Great Emergence: How Christianity Is Changing and Why
About the Author: PJ Ceren's writing reflects his lifetime of experience observing and communicating as a professional photographer and videographer as well as his work as an explorer of the emotional mind as a senior analyst for a national psychological research company. He is the author of the novel, Joseph: Everyone knows who he is but nobody knows who he was.