The Atheist and the Parrotfish received a 4+ star review, making it an IndieReader Approved title.
Following find an interview with author Richard Barager.
The Atheist and the Parrotfish. Publication Date: May 20, 2017
What’s the book’s first line?
“His resentment lay like a dragon in slumber, a smoldering, glowing thing unextinguished by the wash of time.”
What’s the book about? Give us the “pitch”.
A doctor’s religious doubt is shaken by a transplant patient’s eerie knowledge of his organ donor’s most intimate secret.
Nephrologist Cullen Brodie’s disbelief in the afterlife is tested when a cross- transplant patient exhibits behaviors and traits of his female organ donor—details about whom the patient inexplicably knows. The patient’s eerie knowledge of his donor’s greatest secret forces Cullen to consider the unimaginable: transmigration of a human soul.
What inspired you to write the book? A particular person? An event?
This story was inspired by the most unusual patient I ever had, a man who many years ago, when public cross-dressing was rare, came to my office one day wearing a dress and a bra. I asked him why he was dressed as a women. “Because I like it,” he told me, “and that’s all I want to say about it.” I wondered ever since what exactly a man might like about wearing women’s clothes? His story led to this story.
What’s the main reason someone should really read this book?
It is a book whose story explores mankind’s ultimate question: Does God exist? The consequences of the answer to that question are profound, for believers and atheists alike. For if God does not exist, then we are all consigned to oblivion and nothing really matters, because nothing is immortal and there will be no judgment of good and evil at the end. Morality is whatever human beings say it is, rules we make and discard along the way. If God does exist, then we are all of infinite value and will be judged by the moral laws of God, which are fixed and unchanging. Only one side can be right on this, but the consequences are as undeniably profound for one as they are for the other.
What’s the most distinctive thing about the main character? Who-real or fictional-would you say the character reminds you of?
The most distinctive thing about Cullen Brodie is the nature of his relationship with his patients. It is why he became a doctor. Not for the science of it, but for the meaning of it, the chance to engage with other human beings in an intimate way and to help them. Altruism is a basic human impulse, though often an irrational one (Gentiles risking their lives to protect Jews in the Holocaust; a soldier diving on a grenade to protect his platoon mates). Patients allow Cullen to satisfy his need of altruism. It is that way for most doctors I know, myself included. As to whom Cullen reminds me of, well…I’m afraid he bears a vague resemblance to the author!