RICHARD RENÉ is an orthodox clergyman originally from Seychelles.

As a boy growing up in the Seychelles, he experienced the rich mixture of peoples, myths and cultures there, which now find a place in his fiction. He also remembers reading Ende’s ‘The Neverending Story’, a work of marvelous invention which still inspires him as a writer. Richard and his wife have three children. ‘The Nightmare Tree’ is his first publication.

About the author:

Jonah Confait has many magical adventures as he searches for his missing father, only to discover that he is alive but held in captive – and only Jonah can set him free.

In his tale set in the gorgeous Seychelles Islands, Jonah refuses to believe his father has drowned at sea and sets out in a sailboat to search for him. Hi search carries him out of his everyday life to wondrous places with magical beings – like the angeli, who help him in his quest, and the djinn, who enslaves people and feat on their dreams.

Jonah learns about the land of Mysterion, a place of peace that people have forgotten because of their dreams of greed and war. He comes to understand that he must play a part in restoring Mysterion to itself.

From the author:

The reasons for writing ‘The Nightmare Tree’ have emerged for me over the process of six years it has taken to write it. The kernel of the novel lay in the premise of a boy who loved his parents, and then discovered that one of them had done something terrible. The narrative would follow the boy’s discovery and, I believed, his reconciliation with the new knowledge about his parent. It was not until Coteau Books accepted the work, and I was involved in some revisions, that the meaning of that basic premise emerged: the story was about me and my relationship with my parents. I was Jonah who reconciled himself to his father’s human weakness. I was also Francis, Jonah’s father, confronting the reality that my own children will painfully discover my frailty as a father and a human being. Thus I ultimately wrote the book, it seems, to understand the generational relationships in my life, with my parents and my own children.

‘The Nightmare Tree’ has taught me that the only meaningful way through human brokenness is sacrificial love – giving life to others though they do not deserve it. Jonah’s father does not his sons efforts to rescue him. But what is the alternative but a continuing cycle of dysfunction? By taking his father’s place in ‘The Nightmare Tree’, Jonah offers the only answer possible. He breaks the cycle of selfishness that lies as the heart of all human relationships.
 He recognizes that we must love in spite of everything. Although the ones we love may or may not be redeemed by our love, but we still need to love them in order to maintain our own humanity.

Available at www.amazon.ca [1] or www.indigo.ca [2]