The Calling

If you asked Andrew Donelan, he led a charmed life. He had a good wife and partner, well-adjusted kids, an apartment in the city and house in the country — he was on a carefully charted course to enduring happiness. So nothing could have prepared him as he awoke one sunny June morning to a one-dimensional world — hollowed, flattened, mere surfaces.  All intention, purpose, and value had drained from his psyche overnight, like a magic elixer from a leaky jar. He had become an automaton. Looking in the mirror he saw not a life rich with dreams, feelings and goals, but just a thing among things. If luck had loaned him happiness, it had stealthily recalled the loan while he slept.

This sudden, unexpected loss of a meaning forces the narrator onto a quest to recover it. He must embark on a dangerous, uncertain descent through the unconscious, dreams and myths.  This dark path either descends to death or leads back to a renewed life. It is a risk he must take. 

Andrew Donelan had done everything right. He attended the right schools, married the right woman, had a satisfying career and a happy family. So nothing could have prepared him as he woke one June morning to find a hollowed-out world. Instead of his comfortable Manhattan existence he found a world stripped of meaning, color, and interest. In the mirror he saw not a man with hopes and dreams, but a thing among things. Looking inward, he saw nothing — no purpose, no goals, and no idea what to do next. There was nothing left to drive him but habit and automated behaviors.  

But a chance encounter with a radical Czech psychologist sends Donelan on a mission to restore meaning to his life. He descends into an underworld of myth, dreams, and the unconscious to find the hidden sources of human meaning. He faces harrowing spiritual trials and a terrifying encounter with Death. The Calling is a philosophical novel that asks: is the sense of purpose an illusion that can vanish at any moment? And if it does, can we live with the truth that appears in its place?  Is there a natural sense of meaning and purpose, or must it be deliberately and strenuously reconstructed every day? To answer these questions, The Calling presents a midlife crisis as a spiritual catastrophe with life or death consequences.