Love of family and friends is at the heart of A Communion of Saints: Dreams of Happiness on the Road to Life written by Catholic author

Reviewed by Mike Krokos

There is Aunt Mary, who always made the author feel special, talking to him as an adult during his teenage years, treating him with great love and respect, and making him feel grown up.

There is Benedictine Father Blaise, a monk at Saint Meinrad Archabbey and professor whose profound insights helped shape the author’s world view and faith as a student at the abbey in the late 1960s.

And we can’t forget D.J., a lifelong friend who died too young at 52 because of the damage done to his lungs by heavy smoking.

We later learn, at book’s end, that D.J. is also the voice of Alcoholics Anonymous. The disease has been part of the author’s family—on all sides—since before anyone can remember.

In A Communion of Saints: Dreams of Happiness on the Road to Life, author Daniel Conway tells readers that all the characters in his book are real—people who influenced him when he was young, and helped him discover who he is and what he believes—“but these good people are not responsible for the words or actions attributed to them in this book,” he writes.

“That is entirely my responsibility, the work of my imagination,” he adds.

That “imagination” finds the author in a coma, able to sense the presence of concerned family members surrounding him, but unable to speak or communicate in any way.

While lying in a hospital bed after a car accident, the author vividly reflects on his life in a dream-like state. He again meets people who have passed through his days on Earth and touched him in one way or another—even though each person who appears in his dreams has died.

“I honestly don’t know why I’m having these dreams,” he writes. “I could be losing my mind, traumatized by the accident, but truthfully, I don’t care what’s causing this. The opportunity to be with so many people that I loved and lost so many years ago is thrilling. It’s a true-to-life fantasy, a dream come true and a gift I never expected.”

Known throughout the Church for his more than 25 years of experience in helping Catholic organizations with strategic planning, communications, stewardship education and development, Conway—who currently serves as special assistant to the president at Marian University in Indianapolis and occasionally writes editorials for The Criterion—admits that this 120-page book is “a love story.”

“I dare to use the family members and friends characterized in these pages because I know from personal experience that they had—and I believe still have—an abundance of love to share.”

As the days pass in the hospital, the author’s dreams help him appreciate more and more the many people who have gone before him and the joy—and wisdom—they brought to his life.

Well-paced, the book includes several references to Conway’s Catholic upbringing, which plays an integral role in the person that he has become.

“I hope it is a work of imagination that is faithful to the Catholic vision of the world—especially to the Church’s vision of the mysteries of life and death and resurrection,” Conway writes.

In sharing his book, Conway gives those of us who cherish families a gift.

William E. Conway, the author’s uncle, may say it best.

“Nothing is more important than family,” he writes in the book’s foreword.

The book expresses that sentiment simply while “reflecting on strong women and men, strong memories and strong faith,” he adds.

As the author puts it, and we agree, “nothing is more important than family because family binds us to each other and to God.”
 

(Mike Krokos is editor of The Criterion. To order a copy of A Communion of Saints: Dreams of Happiness on the Road to Life, log on to www.saintcathpress.com or www.amazon.com.) †