The Father's Tale 'Like a Thousand Sunrises'

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 28, 2011  Canadian bestselling author and iconographer Michael O'Brien has a body of work overflowing with critical acclaim. That fact makes his newest book, The Father's Tale, even more compelling in light of initial reviews that clearly mark this epic as his best work ever.

"This is a magnum opus in quality as well as quantity," said Dr. Peter Kreeft of Boston College, author of You Can Understand the Bible. "When you finish The Father's Tale you will say of it what Tolkein said of The Lord of the Rings: 'It has one fault; it is too short.' A thousand pages of Michael O'Brien is like a thousand sunrises: who's complaining?"

"Michael O'Brien's achievement here is, I think, titanic," said Thomas Howard, author of Dove Descending: T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets. The Father's Tale is available now from Ignatius Press.

O'Brien himself calls this work "a modern retelling of the parables of The Good Shepherd and The Prodigal Son." He has a string of bestselling books to his credit, including Father Elijah: An Apocalypse; Strangers and Sojourners; Eclipse of the Sun; and several others.

O'Brien is also a highly regarded iconographer whose works have been commissioned by churches and museums. His images include Jesus Christ the Word of Life, St. John Vianney, St. Maximillian Kolbe and The Finding in the Temple.

In The Father's Tale, O'Brien introduces readers to Canadian bookseller Alex Graham, a middle-aged widower whose small-town life had gone smoothly - or so he once believed - until his college-aged son disappears from a British school. Graham leaves his safe, orderly world for the first time and embarks on a perilous journey to search for his son that takes him to Russia and beyond, pulled ever deeper into world conflicts as well as the eternal conflict between good and evil.